The heritagisation São Luiz do Paraitinga : the tourist refuncionalization and the preservation of cultural heritage

Abstract

Based on a space reading, an analysis was performed in the tourist refuncionalization process, which has been going on in the inner city of São Luiz do Paraitinga, a small town located in Vale do Paraíba do Sul, São Paulo, which preserves a significant cultural heritage referring to the memory of coffee and rustic in the region. From the process of heritagisation and tourist refuncionalization, a tourist urbanization process was initiated in the city in order to adapt it to receive tourists, which has promoted there definition of their materiality and immaterialities, now turned in to tourist products. Thus, from the analysis of the cultural heritage of São Luiz do Paraitinga, some notes were made on the dialectical relationship between the preservation of cultural heritage and tourism refuncionalization, since the development of tourism in the place is based on the heritagisation of its urban core.