Social representations and place @-branding of historic European capitals through e-tourism channels

Starting from the assumption that historic European Capitals can be branded just like products, this contribution extends the concept of place-branding and applies it to the digital world of the Internet (place@-branding). Among the various environments, the paper deals in particular with websites as vehicles of images, representations, evaluations of places and social networks as spaces for exchanging and sharing of ‘lived’ or ‘imagined’ experiences of places by tourists and potential tourists.