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Question: What can you learn from actually visiting historical places that you can't learn by just reading about them!?
For example, famous cathedrals or castles!. also, are there any problems in integrating the two sources of information!?Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Factually, nothing!. Historic locales act as a great teaching tool, serving to reinforce time periods and culture different from an observer's current environment!.

They make events more memorable and personally relevant to visitors, and they (usually) promote critical thought, at least more than a history textbook!. Of course, be careful at many historical sites, as they tend to paint a very rosy picture of the person, city, state, etc!. in question!. As always, consider the source when you visit these places!.

But the important thing to remember is history is best researched and learned through experience!. That's how it played out!. People experienced it!. History is not a list of facts!. Events caused other events, and physical reminders can help us think about the past in a way media can not!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

By vivsiting historical places, you can get a real feel for what life would have been like for it's inhabitants, how they would have done things, etc!.
With cathedrals and other religous buildings, you can understand more the power of the faith that was practiced there!. Reading about worship of a particular god for example, is very different from going to that gods shrine and experiencing it for yourself
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You can learn a great deal about how people lived by visiting a site, rather than just reading about it!. History is written by the victors, and so if you were to ask a Roman historian about the Britains you might get a slightly skewed perspective!. Unfortunatley, the Romans wrote things down and the Celts didn't!. You need to get your hands dirty and literally dig for the truth of the matter!.

also, if a person is writing about an event as it happens, their perspective might become warped during traumatic periods!. Look at the problems that Police encounter trying to build a picture of a crime by questioning witnesses!. Another example of this is the Battle of the Little Big Horn!. People site the newspaper articles as evidence when describing the battle (A bit hard to get US military witnesses from this one)!. However, nobody actually asked the Indians what happened and their account of the battle is radically different from popular culture!.

also, the mental picture that you build up, or expect, might be bised by your own experiences or understanding!. Modern historians faced a bit of a problem when trying to determin the series of events during the Germans second Ardennes offensive!. Unfortunately the Holywood version of history told in the film "The Battle of the Bulge", had so influenced the people who lived in the area, that their perceptions had been altered (False memory syndrome), so that they related incidents that were closer to the film than actual events!.

However, back to the mental picture!. You read about Harry Potter, or a similar fictitious charactor!. You build up an image of what the boy and his companions are like!. Then the film comes out!. How does this compare to the image you had formed!?

Even when an image is provided, the reality is quite different!. Take the pyramids at Gizza!. You know what they look like and you have read all of the history!. The fact that a busy metropolis is literally a stones throw, complete with high rises etc!. from the usual pictures of these land marks, probably didn't enter into your mental perspective of these famous monuments!.

LuckWww@QuestionHome@Com

~School is just starting again!. Have a new friend describe his or her house!. Then go visit the house!. Do you think you will have pictured it correctly!?

One difficulty in integrating the two is the manner in which the site was reconstructed or restored!. The description of a 12th century castle will generally not adequately describe the very same castle in the 15th century, let alone the 21st!. Sites such as battlefields cannot be understood unless you visit them!. No matter how much you read about the Pickett, Pettigrew, Trimble Assault, you can have no real understanding of the stupidity of the carnage unless you go to Gettysburg and look (better still, walk) from Seminary Ridge to Cemetery Ridge!. The only 'problem' with visiting a site after you've read about it is that you should enjoy the visit far more, you will understand when the guides and guidebooks are in error, and you will have a much better, more intimate knowledge of the site!. You may even want to return time and again because of that familiarity!. Certainly, you will be better able to interpret the events that happened at the locale and not be so reliant on the conclusions of others!.

You should read before you visit whenever possible so you know what to expect and what to look for!. Reading after the visit is less constructive, less informative and less educational (and less fun) because you will often read about things you didn't know to look for and don't remember seeing during you visit!. I prefer to read before visiting a site and then taking along some articles to read at the site, but I try not to use the materials given (or sold) at the site because I find them unreliable far too often!. The historical markers and plaques in situ are far to brief (and/or biased) to be of much assistance!.

If your interest is castles and cathedrals, written descriptions are a poor substitute for pictures!. Pictures, being two dimensional with no tactile qualities, are a poor substitute for being there and using all of you senses to experience a place!. I don't care how many pictures you've seen or descriptions you've read about Schloss Linderhof, for example!. Unless you go to Oberammergau and walk through the Hall of Mirrors or the Venus Grotto, you cannot conceive of what Ludwig actually had built (or why Bavaria went bankrupt)!.

Likewise, you cannot fathom the horror of Dachau or Auschwitz or Wounded Knee without standing on the grounds nor you cannot understand the accomplishments of Charles Lindberg or Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins without seeing the Spirit of St!. Louis or Columbia!. There is something about kneeling on the sidewalk where Mary Ann Vecchio knelt over the body of Jeffrey Miller that truly drives home the atmosphere of Kent State on May 4, 1970, and with it the spirit of the sixties!. Reading about the Wall makes it sound like a pretty pathetic monument!. Watching your reflection watch you from behind the names gives the place a haunting aura!. Toughing the names, especially if you knew the person engraved there, induces any number of unexpected emotions and memories!. You can't get that from cold paper and ink!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

A picture or a map of a historical place is a very poor reflection of that place!. Actually standing in a fort, cathedral,battlefield, or castle, gives you a "feeling" for the place-imagine the event in your mind while you stand in that place, it becomes much more real, your understanding so much deeper!. It's one thing to read, "Witches were hanged in Salem"; and now stand on the gallows tree hill and experience the essence of the event--the smell of the grass, the warmth of the sun, the touch of the breeze--now imagine the rough rope around your neck, the feel of the ladder rung under your feet, and hear the taunts of your former friends and neighbors, and the event becomes ever so much clearer!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

While reading about historical places is good, it is limited by your imagination and you are only getting one perspective and it is rather one dimensional!. By visiting these places you can get a first hand perspective that is actually your own and you can later compare and contract it to those perspectives in books!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

It gives you an amazing insight and I've done it for years in every place where I have lived!.

You can read about an event but, until you can actually STAND in the place where it happened and look at the geography and geology of the area, you can't really UNDERSTAND why it happened the way it did!. The more you KNOW about an event that happened some place, the easier it is to pick out just WHERE and HOW it happened!.!.!. more than once I have looked at something and suddenly it was as if the whole event was unfolding in front of my eyes!.!. It's a great experience!.

Imagine being able to point to a structure and know that 100 people were murdered there or that the big hole in the outer wall of a castle was where some warrior climbed the wall and held the explosive to the wall with his body and his sacrifice resulted in his side winning the battle!.

The more you can know about the history of a place or event the more you can enjoy it because it makes history come alive in a way that can never been done with books or a TV program!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

In castles you can see how small people were in past ages by the small narrow doors!. You can imagine what it was like living in a huge place with no glass in the windows, no central heating, no carpets, just straw on the floor, no nice bathrooms or flushing toilets, etc!. When I visit cathedrals I am always amazed at how big they are and wonder how they managed to build such beautiful buildings without all our modern tools and methods!. Reading about these places is OK but you need to visit them to feel the atmosphere, to see the workmanship close up to get a proper understanding of the people of those times , their faith, how they lived!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Well, you could have read about the Battle of Gettysburg in your history book last year and you'd have learned all the important names and how it was The Turning Point of the American Civil War and all that, and it would have meant next to nothing to you!. But then, this past July, you could have actually gone to Gettysburg when some seventeen thousand re-enactors and living historians re-created that battle!. You could have walked among our camps, seen and smelled and touched it all!. You could have talked to the guys who got out and shot it out, You could place your hands on an authentic Civil War cannon and learned first-hand how to load it!. You could have talked to my wife about what the wives, mothers, sisters and daughters experienced of the horror of war!. She'd have brought you to tears!. And you could have come to my presentation on a surgeon's duties during and after that battle and seen me cut off a man's leg that was shattered by a bullet as big as your thumb, and then watch him die anyway because I didn't know enough to sterilize my knives and saws!. We would have put you right in the middle of that event and taught you that war isn't great, and isn't kewl, and isn't filled with neat and pretty scenes like some period painting!. You would have had the opportunity to EXPERIENCE the battle - and you would never have forgotten it!. What ya read in a textbook is easy to forget; what you live is impossible to forget!. And it matters!. It matters as much as anything you'll ever learn - because what they were in the Civil War made you and your life what it is today!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

There should not be a problem integrating the two, but seeing something is so wonderful, its a life experience, you could gloat about how you saw something!. And its so amazing to actually see that!.!.!. I went to a huge mansion the "Winchester Mansion" in San Jose!.!.!. IT was great and i am gonna go again! Its lots of fun exploring something than just reading about it!. Www@QuestionHome@Com

Actually being in the space makes it much more real, and often gives one a sense of the effort and bravery that the actual task/history entailed!. To read about something does not give you the same sensory input as if say you were looking at the living quarters and space of a battleship from the 1700's, or the sense of quiet terror and sadness that the Anne Frank house holds !.!.!.or that which a tunnel that was used in the underground railroad would!.

Seeing is believing, basically!. Otherwise it is just words on a page, memorized and then forgotten just as easily!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

Physically seeing something while learning about it is much more exciting than just reading!. And since people generally learn things better when they are excited about them, I would think that actually being there while learning would be much more effective in retaining the information!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

you could read about being in love, or you could actually be in love!. when you have experienced true love your question will be answered,Www@QuestionHome@Com