Publication Date
Spring 2025
Abstract
This study explores the transformation of Sufi shrines in Tunisia into café spaces that cater to tourists while maintaining traces of religious significance. Through historical research, site visits, and interviews, I examine how these hybrid spaces navigate the tension between sacredness and commercialization. Using theories of authenticity and religious tourism, I analyze how Islamic aesthetics are repurposed to attract visitors, often without their awareness of the shrine’s spiritual role. An additional case study of a shrine now functioning as a ceramics studio offers an alternative model of adaptive reuse rooted in cultural sustainability. Rather than viewing commercialization as simple erasure, this study considers how shrine-cafés complicate our understanding of heritage, authenticity, and the ways sacred spaces are preserved, reimagined, and lived in today.
Disciplines
Arts and Humanities | Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Baker, LeAnna, "Holy Grounds and Coffee Grounds: Tourism, Authenticity, and the Adaptive Reuse of Sufi Shrines in Tunisia" (2025). Tunisia and Italy: Politics and Religious Integration in the Mediterranean. 2.
https://digitalcollections.sit.edu/tnc3/2