Tourism, design, and the souvenir as evidence of the inner journey

The word souvenir first appeared in French in the thirteenth century, derived from se souvenir — meaning the act of bringing back what has already passed into presence. Originally a verb, the term described the practice of being aware of time and reactivating memories. Before becoming a tangible item, a souvenir was primarily a mental and emotional process: to retain, to summon, and to bring back memories.

The Romans framed this process as a political act. Each conquered province sent to the capital various tokens: coins, cloth, amulets, small statues, architectural pieces, and tiny stone inscriptions. These items acted as concrete proof of imperial growth, showcasing material symbols of sovereignty. Owning a fragment symbolized holding the territory. The items sent to Rome embodied delegated presence: the empire stayed visible through these representations.

From that point on, remembrance shifted from an internal act to an organized practice. The souvenir transformed into a portable capsule capturing place, time, and power. Distance became a tangible, transportable entity. The empire realized that making a fragment of the world reappear was like rewriting the world within its core.

Christian culture refined this idea by turning relics into networks of spiritual exchange. Bones, hair, blood drops, cloth scraps, and wood splinters each served as tangible proof of sacred presence. A fragment confirmed a miraculous event, regardless of its size; what mattered was its ability to embody the entire promise. For believers, the journey always culminated in a return: taking home a relic was like bringing a piece of transcendence into everyday life.

At this stage, the initial conceptual axis of this discussion becomes clear.

Every memory acts as a montage, with the souvenir serving as its initial portable tool.

To remember is to create a version of what has already happened. The souvenir functions as a tool for that editing process. Instead of preserving the past exactly as it was, it reshapes it into a present-day form. Every surface, material, and inscription constructs a structured fiction of memory. Memory transforms into language, and the souvenir acts as its portable grammar.

With the rise of modern tourism in the nineteenth century, souvenirs shifted from being solely transmitted through religious or imperial paths to becoming part of the industrial sphere. Travel transformed into an experience sold to consumers, and keepsakes became tangible extensions of that experience. Items like picture postcards, silver spoons, porcelain trinkets, folded maps, and ceramic tiles depicting seascapes each serve as personal editions of the world, shaped by an affective economy.

The souvenir transforms into a dispersed mode of publishing, where each individual constructs a personal archive of displacement. The suburban refrigerator door functions as a museum of magnets; the suitcase carries miniature monuments; the bookshelf showcases vitrified cities. The journey occurs both within the body experiencing it and in the artefact that recovers it.

Remembering involves editing, while publishing is about selection. The souvenir reinforces this connection by turning memory into a tangible circulation. Each recovered fragment tells a story: “I was there,” “I saw this,” “I participated in the world.” Remembrance assumes a physical form, weight, and texture, transforming into a place of reflection.

The souvenir inherently functions as a means of temporal re-entry. With each return, a different version of the original event emerges. Every act of preservation alters the trace as it circulates. Memory thus becomes a dynamic and mobile fabrication of the real, continually shifting as it moves.

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Travel has traditionally involved physical movement, but contemporary tourism introduces an additional dimension: the quest for a particular sensory experience. The trip transforms into an emotional performance rather than just a spatial journey. Every destination presents its unique mix of ambiance, tempo, tactile qualities, storytelling, and emotional impact. Travelers not only search for locations but also for versions of themselves that can only emerge through those experiences.

The souvenir is part of this sensory framework. It acts as a collector of experiences, capturing the emotional essence of the trip. A handful of sand in a bottle, a quick photo, a city-name T-shirt, a shot glass, a postcard of a deserted beach—each object serves as a tangible trigger for sensory recall. Instead of simply saving the place visited, it retains the body’s memory of that place.

The tourism of the senses functions as an economy of atmospheres. Every area becomes a perceptual surface that can be harvested, archived, and transported. Design is crucial in this process. Tourist spaces now go beyond natural or urban environments; they include visual identities, local typographies, signage systems, packaging, illustrated maps, merchandising, architectural icons, playlists, Instagram filters, and hashtags. Each component shapes the experience before it starts and extends it afterward.

The souvenir serves as a key part of this emotional architecture. Its portability guarantees that the emotional experience persists beyond the journey. What we bring back is not just a piece of land, but an encapsulated reflection of what was felt. In this way, the souvenir acts as an emotional representation of the world.

Unlike the historical archive that aims for stability, the souvenir thrives through circulation. It transfers from hand to hand, from house to house, and from surface to surface. For example, a magnet moves between refrigerators, a festival bracelet shifts from one wrist to another, and a printed photograph changes frames. The souvenir acts as a mobile entity that adjusts to its new environments, helping it preserve memories. It doesn’t cement the past but rather redefines and re-inscribes it.

The sensorial tourism relies on this exchange. The reason for the journey isn’t just what is observed, but also what is taken away, remembered later, or shared with others who were never present. The souvenir acts as a strong symbol of displacement. When someone views it, they perceive an elsewhere: a moment experienced in a different place, under a different climate, at a different time on Earth.

Design enhances this circuit by crafting surfaces that serve as reactivation triggers. An image can reawaken a smell. A logo can stir an emotional response. A splash of color can rejuvenate a particular light. The souvenir is more than just a memory; it acts as a sensory interface, a subtle gateway for return.

Every journey initiates a perceptual cycle, which is extended by each souvenir. Tourism develops as an emotional ecosystem, with souvenirs acting as its portable tools. Experiences become shareable, tangible, and adjustable. Memories enter public circulation.

From this moment on, the economy of remembrance gains political significance.

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The souvenir functions beyond just being an emotional keepsake or personal memento; it is part of a tangible economy of memory. What we bring back is not merely memories but also goods. Remembrance transforms into an economic flow, seen in airport stalls, street markets, museum shops, online platforms, and even in algorithmic systems that produce “automatic memories.”

Memory moves into production. Each souvenir is a small, marketable version of an experience. Cities export bits of themselves in molded plastic, lacquered wood, screen-printed cotton, tempered glass, or compressed JPEG. The world turns into a catalog of portable items. Tourism shifts to extracting atmosphere — and the souvenir becomes the commercial residue of that process.

The morality of remembrance grows more intricate when it involves traumatic memories. Tragedy also creates a flow of objects and stories. At the Auschwitz Museum, items like brushes, shoes, suitcases, prosthetics, bodily traces, and personal belongings serve as evidence of extermination. There’s no colorful souvenir stand or commemorative merchandise; instead, visitors are given the duty to remember. The exhibition avoids aestheticization, turning the trace into a documentary record.

The Hiroshima case reveals a clear contrast: the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum presents a pacifist, anti-nuclear story, while outside, a marketplace of tourist souvenirs flourishes — from keychains featuring stylized atomic clouds to plush toys imprinted with the city’s emblem. Official memory takes on an educational role; commercial memory serves a decorative purpose. Both coexist and vie for influence over the narrative.

Chernobyl introduces a third dimension. The sale of “radioactive souvenirs”—such as graphite fragments sealed in resin or vitrified charcoal—transforms trauma into a post-nuclear keepsake. What was once a trace of disaster is now a collectible. Remembrance turns into private property, and risk becomes a fetish.

These cases show that souvenirs are more than just travel mementos; they act as economic agents of public memory. The items sold influence what is remembered. Circulation of these objects replaces direct experience and helps stabilize the story of the event. Visitors depart with a portable form of history, and this version influences how the past is perceived.

Pierre Nora referred to these sites as lieux de mémoire, meaning places where the past functions as a tool for collective remembrance. Marianne Hirsch characterized this as postmemory: the emotional transfer of trauma that an individual has never experienced directly but has inherited through images, objects, and rituals. Andreas Huyssen offered an additional perspective, explaining that in our current era, an overload of memories exists alongside the rapid digital pace of the present, leading to a “surplus of past.”

The souvenir exists within a regime of excess and circulation. It serves as a fragment of history that comes into being in the moment of consumption. Remembrance gains exchange value; trauma transforms into an adaptable narrative; the trace becomes a reproducible form. The economy of remembrance influences what is revived and keeps the past perpetually active.

When memory moves into the digital realm, this economy becomes more powerful. The electronic souvenir—a cloud-stored photo, an automatic “five years ago today” alert, a platform-archived video, or an NFT verifying attendance—transforms experience into lasting data. Instead of a physical object carried back by a person, a computer algorithm now reintroduces the memory without a body. The souvenir is not physically held; it is presented again through technology.

Memory begins to circulate independently.

The question then becomes: who determines what qualifies as returns?

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Publishing involves making something available to others. Every act of publishing transforms an event into a shareable format. The souvenir is part of this process, serving as a condensed record of time—a portable inscription that preserves lived memory. Rather than the direct experience itself, it provides a possible interpretation of the event.

Every souvenir functions as a small fragment of time. It chooses, trims, condenses, simplifies, and interprets. Similar to a book, it is shaped by decisions: what is kept, what is omitted, what is emphasized, and what is duplicated. Memory becomes understandable because it takes on a tangible form. The souvenir enacts this structuring on a handheld scale.

Design practices approach editorial work by controlling what is brought back to the present. Whether it’s a poster, tourist map, museum package, illustrated postcard, or archival app, all serve as editing systems. Each medium shapes which memories are made visible and how they circulate. Ultimately, design creates different versions of the world.

The electronic souvenir amplifies this process. Digital platforms constantly edit the past: they turn old photos into notifications, reorganize albums, and remount archives automatically. Remembrance appears through cycles of reactivation. Memory is revived because the system triggers it again.

The NFT introduces a new aspect: certifying presence in singular form. Instead of focusing solely on visual or sonic content, it now guarantees an unrepeatable existence stored in a block of data. The digital souvenir transforms into exclusive property, and the act of remembering gains cryptographic significance. Remembering also means owning, as memory aligns with the principles of collecting and deliberate scarcity.

A political question then appears: what role does design play in this economy of remembrance?

The design field exemplifies the tension between commercial memory and critical reflection. Museum merchandising design transforms remembrance into portable items, as seen with artefacts from the MoMA Design Store, Tate Modern, and Louvre, where historical memory becomes a marketable surface. Urban tourism, represented by graphic identities like “I ❤ NY” or “Lisboa Sardinha,” follows the same logic: souvenirs act as proof of circulation, ready to be photographed, shared, and archived. Conversely, other practices, such as biographical-archive apps, affective museology projects, or installation-based experiences, take a different approach by reopening the past instead of freezing it. Examples like StoryCorps, the Museum of Broken Relationships, or future-oriented design proposals show that design can foster remembrance rather than fetishize it. The ethical dimension of design lies in shaping the type of memory that is promoted and the form of forgetting that is enabled.

Design practice can either reinforce the commercialization of remembrance by packaging each trace as a quickly circulated product, or it can create memory devices that foster an alternative kind of return—one that goes beyond purely commercial reasons. Situated between steady collection and complete silence is an active space: editions that reveal cracks, surfaces that accept gaps, and publications that revive memory while diverting the event from a rigid form.

Some artifacts present the past as a commodity, while others pose it as a question. This distinction is clear in their editing style.

Design no longer functions merely as a visualization tool but becomes a temporal operator. Every formal decision reflects an ethics of memory: how much to reveal, what to keep hidden, and the kind of return that is provided. Publishing involves decisions about how time reenters the present.

The souvenir reveals the editor’s power, acting as a torn-out page from the world— a fragment that fits in your hand, travels, shifts location, encounters another object, and generates a new interpretation. This event stays in circulation through ongoing re-editions.

The souvenir concentrates, shifts, and sends away. Memory remains in movement.

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Every souvenir holds the promise of bringing us back. Rather than restoring the original place we once inhabited, it provides a way to re-inscribe it. Its strength comes from this ongoing activation: it carries the past in a flexible form and reopens time as something that can be edited. The souvenir revitalizes the experience and extends the life of the event.

Return occurs via attention. A magnet on a fridge door, a digital fragment reappearing through an algorithm, a ceramic item from a bazaar, an NFT shown on a screen—each trace fulfills its purpose when a body reads it. The souvenir is made complete through this encounter. The journey continues whenever someone observes the artifact, and in that act, the path is reopened.

Marcel Mauss described the gift as a circular system: what departs returns because it sustains a living relation with the one who gives. The souvenir participates in that same structure. It travels, changes place, shifts owners, alters its function, yet always returns in a new form — what comes back differs from what left, and that transformation confirms the vitality of the relation. The return serves as proof that something remains in circulation.

David Graeber expanded this concept by suggesting that every economy functions as a moral economy of attention. The returns we see reveal what a community values. A souvenir doesn’t circulate randomly; it moves because someone believes it is worth returning. Each return is a deliberate choice, and each choice reflects an underlying affective, political, or economic hierarchy.

Nietzsche viewed the eternal return as a trial of resilience: only what can return endlessly proves its own existence. The souvenir acts as a mobile embodiment of this idea. A trace that repeatedly reappears without fading indicates that its memory is still fluid. The return serves as a vibratory confirmation: as long as it produces new interpretations, it stays alive in the present.

Bruno Latour likened the world to a network of ongoing circulations, where each entity gains stability through its movement. The souvenir exemplifies this idea, as its identity forms from its journey rather than its material. An artifact is always altered upon return: its meaning, context, emotional impact, and story evolve. This return symbolizes ongoing change, emphasizing novelty over repetition.

At this stage, the souvenir acts as a temporal re-entry device, transforming from a mere trip marker. Each return marks a new beginning. The past reemerges in a different form, influencing the present that encounters it. The souvenir turns what was into a future potential, inviting fresh interpretations and inscriptions.

Design plays a vital role in this cycle of return. A surface can either invite or hinder the encounter. A pattern might either reveal or hide memory. An interface can either expose or erase temporalities. Form is not just about storage — it facilitates the return. Creating an artifact involves designing how it will return.

The trip concludes when we depart from the place, but the souvenir keeps its memory alive. Its real journey begins with our return, which isn’t about moving away but about ongoing re-creation.

Every souvenir manifests as a different version. Each version changes memory, and each change in memory creates a new timeline.

A return does not simply repeat; it creates a difference.

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Every souvenir originates from the end of a journey and marks the start of another. It prolongs the experience, maintaining momentum—each memory artifact acts as a bridge between what has occurred and what is yet to come. Returning to these souvenirs revisits the past and alters it.

Memory is always reconstructed in a modified form. Every surface, material, image, and interface offers a version of what was once experienced. To remember is to piece together. The souvenir functions as a tool for this portable montage. What we carry reflects more the potential to revisit the place than the place itself.

Societies structure themselves based on what they are able to recover. The Roman Empire, medieval Christianity, contemporary museums, digital platforms, tourist markets, private collections, and public archives all follow a comparable pattern: they choose what should be returned, decide how it will be returned, and authorize what is worthy of circulation. The act of returning shapes the economy, politics, and storytelling.

The souvenir reveals architecture’s nature. It can function as a symbol of authority, commerce, nostalgia, education, propaganda, affection, or irony. Its impact doesn’t rely on size but on its ability to break into and reopen time. Anyone who acquires a souvenir gains a curated moment in time and takes on the responsibility of shaping the next version.

Design’s critical role is to create ways of returning that encourage openness rather than restriction. An artifact can strengthen ownership or promote sharing. It can solidify a story or enable it to evolve into new interpretations. It may soothe the past or reframe it as a question. Ethics come into play when the final form published influences the type of return it permits.

The souvenir extends the journey and maintains the route in ongoing motion. Circulation sustains the event’s vitality. Time is reinterpreted through recomposition, creating new expressions of lived experience. The souvenir functions as a means of re-sending, reactivating the past rather than anchoring it.

Every time it comes back, the person who encounters it comes back too. Memory shifts and carries us along. We revisit the past as if for the first time. Return is never the same twice.

The journey persists because it keeps going, and it keeps going because it persists.

Referencies

Appadurai, A. (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. University of Minnesota Press.

Benjamin, W. (2008). The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility and Other Writings on Media (M. W. Jennings, B. Doherty & T. Y. Levin, Eds.). Harvard University Press.

Dunne, A., & Raby, F. (2013). Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press.

Graeber, D. (2011). Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Melville House.

Hirsch, M. (2012). The Generation of Postmemory: Writing and Visual Culture After the Holocaust. Columbia University Press.

Huyssen, A. (2003). Present Pasts: Urban Palimpsests and the Politics of Memory. Stanford University Press.

Latour, B. (2012). Enquête sur les modes d’existence: Une anthropologie des Modernes. La Découverte.

Mauss, M. (2002). The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies (W. D. Halls, Trans.). Routledge.

Nora, P. (1984–1992). Les Lieux de mémoire (Vols. 1–3). Gallimard.

Nietzsche, F. (2006). Thus Spoke Zarathustra (A. Del Caro & R. B. Pippin, Trans.). Cambridge University Press.

Stewart, S. (1993). On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection. Duke University Press.