In 1925, the German-born writer Hermann Hesse, living then in Tessin, the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, wrote a visionary text entitled The Tourist City in the South. This text is considered as a primer in the encounter of humanistic geography and literature. In focusing on both structure and lived experience in a tourist city, the writer anticipates the debate in contemporary tourism geography : how to build a model for a such a tourist city and what type of criticism may arise from such a social construction ?