Abstract

What makes pilgrims form emotional bonds to the holy place they visit during a pilgrimage? Even though the research on place attachment and belonging is prolific, place attachment to holy places is vastly overlooked in spatial research. Pilgrim literature on the other hand tends to correlate religious denomination with spatial preferences during pilgrimage. However, religious denomination is a binary and coarse measurement. This article instead explores a number of other spatial and identity-based factors that can explain what causes the emotional connection between the pilgrim and the place. Based on a quantitative study, place attachment to the Via Dolorosa among Catholic and Evangelical Protestant pilgrims is explored from a place attachment perspective. The study shows that both groups attach to the Via Dolorosa equally strongly, but their attachments correlate with different aspects of the site. Rather than religious denomination, the place attachment correlates with perceiving the place as holy or authentic, and also with Zionistic values. The presented results therefore provide a starting point for further studies on how identity traits and narrative impact place attachment during pilgrimage.