Abstract
Open-air museums have long been part of the cultural scene and for over a century have been one of the many different experiences available for tourists. Created around a tangible landscape of heritage, open-air museums offer their visitors a chance to ‘step back' in time and experience ‘the past' in an interactive and accessible manner. Open-air museums are complex social spaces that operate as a significant medium to portray ‘the past' but which remain imperfectly understood. This omission, it is suggested, has a direct impact upon our ability to understand and evaluate the visitor experience offered at such places. Research undertaken to date has failed to offer a coherent, flexible and replicable means of analysis. This paper advocates a new, overarching methodology - the heritagescape - as a way to begin to understand the specific qualities of open-air museums and how they work within the broader context of heritage sites. At the same time, this method will enable researchers to gain a better understanding of the visitor experience as it relates to the landscape of heritage on offer at open-air museums and other heritage sites.

Keywords: Open-air museum, visitor experience, heritage sites, heritagescape, landscape

By Mary-Catherine E. Garden