Research on cultural tourism development in sacral and spiritual sites from the UNESCO World Heritage List

This paper explores the effects of tourism on the transmission of intangible cultural heritage of the tangible sites placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List. It uses a preliminary review of literature on intangible values of heritage sites combined with research made on so called cultural tourism development in the sacral and spiritual sites from the World Heritage List. In the research realized for this paper were considered such sites as: churches, temples, necropolises, tombs, monasteries, sanctuaries and so called spiritual centres. The aim of the research was to find answers for the following questions:"how the development of cultural tourism affected the spiritual character of the World Heritage Site? and which ways of the preservation were taken to avoid the loss of their sacral meaning?". The purpose of this paper was also to critically examine how tourism stimulates the preservation and transmission of spiritual meaning of sacral heritage sites. On the base of the presented research there were proposed ways of preservation of the intangible character of the spiritual sites in danger of rapid grow of tourism development.