ABSTRACT
Over the centuries countless millions of people have traveled to iconic religious sites such as Mecca, Rome, and Jerusalem and today, with the comparative ease of international travel, even more millions continue to gravitate towards these same shrines. In a world that seems to be increasingly secular, religious pilgrimage is thriving. But new sites of pilgrimage are also emerging, as scenes of contemporary mourning turn into spontaneous secular shrines. Among the most publicized of these are the huge areas that were carpeted with fl owers, votive candles, pictures, and messages outside Kensington Palace after the death of Princess Diana in 1997, and Ground Zero in the wake of the attack on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001. Similar scenes have been replicated at other sites of tragedy in localities all over the world, where communities of people commemorate events that are important to them by creating memorials and wayside shrines as public manifestations of their sorrow or trauma.
