The Heritage Paradox: When Tourism Turns the Idyllic into the Mercantile in Rural Transylvania

Heritage tourism is increasingly positioned as a strategy for revitalising rural communities, particularly in areas where structural transformations have changed traditional ways of life. However, its outcomes reveal a paradox. The same processes that preserve cultural landscapes often commodify them, converting living traditions into marketable symbols. This paper investigates this heritage paradox through a complex study of Viscri, a UNESCO-listed village in Transylvania, Romania. Combining demographic and occupational data (2002–2022) with 51 questionnaires, 7 semi-structured interviews, field observations, and local records, the study examines how tourism-driven heritage valorisation reshapes socio-economic structures and identity narratives. The results show a profound restructuring of livelihoods, with a marked decline in subsistence agriculture and the emergence of micro-entrepreneurial activities related to accommodation, crafts, and gastronomy. These changes, while improving local incomes and infrastructures, have also increased external ownership and redefined authenticity as a performative resource negotiated among residents, entrepreneurs, and visitors. Local voices oscillate between pride and fatigue, between preservation and loss. By conceptualising the heritage paradox as a dynamic interplay between conservation and commodification, this study contributes to global debates on authenticity, sustainable rural transformation, and community resilience, offering an empirically grounded model of heritage tourism’s ambivalent consequences through an original analytical lens for post-socialist rural contexts.