ARTISTIC EXPLORATIONS
A 2011 exhibit of Pablo Picasso?s works at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts generated nearly $29 million in economic activity for the state.
One study estimated the impact of the Louvre?the world?s most visited museum?on the French economy to be between $870 million and $1.4 billion in a single year.
More than a million people saw Michelangelo?s David in 2009, paying more than $7 million for tickets at the Accademia Gallery in Florence.
The wheres and the whys of the modern pilgrim
LITERARY PILGRIMAGES (BY NUMBER OF ANNUAL VISITORS)
Walden Pond, Massachusetts: 650,000
The Bront? Parsonage Museum, Haworth, England: 75,000
Jane Austen?s house, Chawton, England: 39,000
Doune Castle, Scotland, a main location for filming Monty Python and the Holy Grail: 34,000
The Stieg Larsson Millennium Tour, Stockholm: 10,000
DISASTER TOURS
Gray Line Tours in New Orleans offers a three-hour Hurricane Katrina tour, built around an ?eyewitness account of the events surrounding the most devastating natural?and man-made?disaster on American soil!?
For the first six months of last year, tourists could take guided expeditions into the former exclusion zone near the Chernobyl nuclear power plant organised by the Ukranian Ministry of Emergencies.
Roughly 10,000 people a day visit the new memorial at Ground Zero in Manhattan, which opened on September 12, 2011. This year, the site could average more visitors a day than either the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building.
CLIMB EVERY MOUNTAIN
In December 2011, 15-year-old Jordan Romero became the youngest person to climb the highest peak on all seven continents, ascending Mount Everest at age 13.
In 2010, Japan?s Takao Arayama became the oldest person to climb the highest peak on all seven continents. He was 74.
WHERE THE APPETITE LEADS
A man who calls himself Winter had visited 10,789 Starbucks as of the end of last month. His goal is to visit every one in the world.
Julia Child?s preserved kitchen helps draw 4.5 million visitors to the Smithsonian?s National Museum of American History each year.
The Eat, Pray, Love tour by STA Travel allowed readers to follow the same itinerary as Elizabeth Gilbert in her 2006 memoir?from Italy to India to Bali?and to eat what she ate along the way.
The grave of the chef Hector Boiardi ?whose Boyardee canned pasta products became a multibillion-dollar business?attracts food historians to the All Souls Cemetery in Chardon, Ohio.
VOYAGES
Jean B?liveau spent years walking (2000-2011) with a stroller through six continents and 64 countries.
The annual Run for the Wall takes hundreds of veterans and their supporters on motorbikes from California to Maya Lin?s Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.
Benka Pulko of Slovenia took a 1,11,856-mile solo motorcycle journey from 1997 to 2002, through seven continents and 75 countries.
The English adventurer Ranulph Fiennes completed seven marathons on seven continents in seven days in the fall of 2003?four and a half months after heart bypass surgery.
Runners from around the country pay vigil each year at Pre?s Rock, where the gifted athlete Steve Prefontaine?who set more than a dozen US track records?died in a car accident at age 24.
SEEKING THE DIVINE
Nearly 40% of the 2.8 million tourists to Israel in 2010 cited a religious pilgrimage as the main purpose of their visit. Here are some less familiar religious destinations:
The tomb of Jesus Christ in Shingo, Japan. Local legend has it that Jesus escaped crucifixion (his brother Isukiri took his place on the cross), moved to Japan and married a local woman. When he died, at 106, he was buried here.
The tomb of Jesus Christ in Kashmir. A local legend contends that Jesus survived the crucifixion, travelled to India, assumed the name Yuz Asaf, married, fathered several children and died at 120.
The L Ron Hubbard House in Phoenix. In this house, the founder of the Church of Scientology wrote the first books of a new religion. In 2005, the house was restored and opened as a heritage site.
The Temple of Rats in Deshnoke, India. At this Hindu shrine, 20,000 rats are worshiped as reincarnated spirits of humans. Sighting a rare white one is considered auspicious.