What makes a tourist attraction?

As travellers increasingly follow social media feeds and internet memes, the most unlikely of things can become tourist attractions.

The docent said she wanted to take our photo. "To send it to Cecelia in order to let her know what a good thing she did," said the woman. "That people are now coming to this small town in Spain because of her 'mistake'." 

I was in Borja, a 5,000-person town in Spain's northern Aragon province. It was here that in 2012, an elderly parishioner and amateur art restorer named Cecilia Giménez captured the world's attention when she chose to touch up a fresco of Jesus Christ titled Ecce Homo in the Santuario de Misericordia church that had deteriorated since it was painted in the 1930s. Giménez had originally proposed to just add some colouring to Jesus' clothing. But as the 81-year-old was working on it, she couldn't help herself: she began repainting the face.

When she took a break from her duties to go on holiday, she returned to find crowds of shocked people and a horde of international press at the church. The restoration looked so different that local authorities initially assumed the painting had been vandalised. Yet, it was just the (unfinished) work of Giménez, who thought she could restore the painting to its former glory.

Instead, Ecce Homo ("Behold the Man" in Latin) was rebranded "Ecce Mono" ("Behold the Monkey") by the Spanish media. At first this seemed like an art tragedy. The image of the "Monkey Christ", as the English-language press deemed it, was all over the internet. Memes were created. Social media mocked it to death. And Giménez became a hermit in her home, stricken with grief from all the ridicule it caused.

But then something interesting happened: tourists started turning up in Borja. This small town that had previously welcomed just 5,000 visitors per year suddenly had a surge of travellers coming to see the botched restoration of Ecce Homo. Today, officials say that between 15,000 and 20,000 tourists per year flock to Borja to see the famous flub of a portrait, which is now, like the Mona Lisa and other masterpieces of the art world, behind a protective shield of glass.

On a recent trip with my Spanish-born wife to visit her family in the nearby city of Zaragoza, I suggested we take a daytrip to Borja to see the simian saviour. My sister-and-law and her daughter looked at me for a moment before one of them uttered, "Why would you want to see that">window._taboola = window._taboola || []; _taboola.push({ mode: 'alternating-thumbnails-a', container: 'taboola-below-article', placement: 'Below Article', target_type: 'mix' });