We need to distinguish themes from related notions such as decor, atmosphere, ambience, and from allusions and references. When Paris emphatically presents itself to tourists, is it a themed place? Does Boston's Quincy Market have only decor and not a theme? Just what it does it mean for a place to have a theme?
My suggestion is that a themed place involves a self-presentation of the place as a self-conscious representation of something else. More precisely, a themed place has a unified normative grammar that controls the details of its decor and character, and a themed place self-consciously presents that grammar and character as self-consciously presented, as influencing those details, as different from the grammar and character of local everyday places, and as based on a unified ruling meaning established elsewhere.
This definition suggests several difficult questions.
(c) David Kolb, 1 August 2001