Introduction

This chapter begins by investigating how objective authenticity is practised in the development of English historic cities. It examines how tourists consume heritage cities as primary forms of interpretation, seeking the city of origin through various methods, such as finding a 'bird's eye view of time' from high buildings and exploring the streetscape. The chapter examines how tourists consume heritage cities as primary forms of interpretation, seeking the city of origin through various methods, such as finding a 'bird's eye view of time' from high buildings and exploring the streetscape. It assesses how explanations of the many architectural styles and false facades of buildings are experienced by tourists on guided tours, leading them to suspend their sense of disbelief and 'inauthenticate' places, searching for fakery. The chapter suggests that tourist-flaneur encounters with hyperreal simulacra in the form of fantastical, surreal and outsize art may evoke dreamscapes, phantasmagorias and imaginaries.