Imagens e narrativas da Coimbra turística: Entre a cidade real e a cidade (re)imaginada1

Abstract

At a time when we witness growing tourist fascination for towns and cities, this article seeks to understand how Coimbra presents itself to the outside world, to tourists and visitors. With the historical and monumental town having become one of the main attractions of our time, this article picks up on the tourist promotional materials circulating in Portugal and abroad to address how Coimbra's urban resources are transformed into tourist-appeal factors. Because towns and cities are also sites of the imagination and of representation, this article discusses the notion of image in connection to marketing and advertising operations developed with a view to promoting tourism. Its main goal is to unveil the (re)imagined town: that which, through the work of symbolic translation carried out by promoters and mediators, circulates among the tourist-destination markets - unveiling also the approximations and distances between the tourist's town and the real town. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]