A landmark is any building, structure or other feature that is easily recognizable. Often landmarks are based on their historical significance or the presence of other important structures within the area.
Landmarks serve as a focal point for tourists and locals. They also help people navigate their way through a place.
Definition
A landmark is a feature that is easily recognised and can help you to find your way around. It could be a building or other structure, or it might be a natural feature like a mountain or a river.
It could also be a place that is famous because it was built with clever engineering or is very old, like the pyramids in Egypt or the Statue of Liberty in New York. Landmarks are very important and sometimes are protected by governments as World Heritage Sites.
The word landmark comes from Middle English *landmearc, from Old English landmearc (“boundary”) and Old English landgemirce (a boundary line).
Noun A prominent identifying feature of a landscape; one of the fixed objects used to designate the limits of a farm, town, or other piece of territory, as monumental stones, marked trees, or ditches.
Having great import or significance: A landmark court ruling.
Functions
The landmark can be a natural feature or a man-made structure (like a building, for example). These can help people in wayfinding by providing important information about the environment.
Landmarks also play a role in memory and orientation. The presence of a landmark in the environment can influence hippocampal place cells that encode spatial location information.
This is particularly true in rodents, where the presence of a stable object in a visual environment can improve navigational performance.
These findings are in line with research on human navigation in which environmental objects can function as landmarks based on their geometry, as well as their intrinsic shape.
To better understand the functions of landmarks in wayfinding, more research is needed. This research should include multi-scaled environments, varying layouts and participants with different levels of environment-familiarity. This will help to identify the specific factors that impact people’s use of landmarks in wayfinding tasks. Lastly, it will also help to better define the parameters of landmarks and their saliency.
Historical significance
A landmark is any distinctive feature that can help you recognize a place, event, or person in time and space. It may be a natural or artificial feature.
Landmarks are often buildings or structures that were important during specific times in history, but they can also be natural features. For example, the Statue of Liberty is a prominent symbol for New York City.
During the Age of Exploration, Table Mountain near Cape Town, South Africa was used as a landmark to help sailors navigate around the southern tip of Africa.
National Historic Landmarks are cultural properties that are judged by the Secretary of the Interior to possess national significance in American history, archeology, architecture, engineering and culture and so designated by him. These buildings, sites, districts, structures and objects have exceptional value in illustrating or interpreting our heritage.
Tourism
Tourism is the movement of people to a place outside their usual environment for business, recreational or cultural purposes. Typically, tourists stay in hotels and other types of lodging, buy food and drink, and spend money on souvenirs or other items.
The tourism sector is a key economic driver in many economies, with a wide range of benefits to the local economy including tax revenue and income for residents, increased employment opportunities, and a positive image for a destination. In addition, it contributes to conservation of natural environments and cultural assets and traditions.
Tourism is a broad term, and there are many different forms of it. Some are more obvious, such as leisure-oriented tourism to beaches or tropical islands, and others may be less obvious. These include cultural tourist attractions, such as historical places, museums and art galleries, botanical gardens, monuments and temples.