If the crowds under Paris ' Eiffel Tower get you down , try Shenzhen in China . It may not have the history of the French construction , but at least the coffee will be cheaper . Or you could head to Berlin . Or to Las Vegas . Or several other locales with their own `` Eiffel Towers . '' The replication of tourist attractions has been gaining traction in recent years . Most recently , a Spanish company has been employed to replicate Egypt 's ancient pharaonic tombs . Opening to the public later this month about half a mile from the original tomb in Luxor 's Valley of the Kings , the replica will be located outside the house of Howard Carter , the expedition leader who disinterred the pharaoh almost a century ago . The reconstruction is a response to the threat posed by the hundreds of thousands of tourists traipsing through the real relic every year . Changes in temperature and humidity caused by their presence in the burial chamber have caused the striking plaster-painted murals on the walls to begin crumbling away . Tut 's new tomb . The solution was for the Madrid-based company Factum Arte to create replicas of King Tut 's and the other pharaonic tombs , including Seti I and Nefertari , as a philanthropic exercise granted permission by Egypt 's Supreme Council of Antiquities in 2009 . The firm used minutely detailed , hi-tech techniques honed on reproductions over the past decade , including copies of the pharaoh Thutmose III 's tomb in 2003 and , more recently , of Leonardo 's painting `` The Last Supper '' and Caravaggio 's `` Inspiration of St . Matthew . '' The replication of King Tut 's and the other royal tombs represents the company 's most ambitious project to date , as well as being the most detailed large-scale facsimile project ever undertaken , Factum Arte says . More : World 's most beautiful bank buildings . Special 3D scanning systems were developed for the job , allowing the burial chamber to be measured at 100 million points every square meter . The resulting 3D relief of the tomb was then reproduced on casts that were finished by hand . `` Is it exactly the same as viewing the real tomb ? No . But what you can do is exceedingly high , '' Adam Lowe , Factum Arte 's director , told CNN . `` You can 'rematerialize ' the quality of the original at a normal viewing distance , so the experience is visually identical to standing in the tomb . `` It 's not an exercise in faking but [ partly about ] revealing the condition of the original to allow it to be monitored . '' It 's estimated that 500,000 visitors a year will visit the replica relics , the resulting funds going in part towards preserving Egypt 's real heritage sites . Cool copy cats . Copying an ancient monument has an obvious appeal . You get to keep the original version , as well as all the tourists -- and their revenue -- threatening to destroy it . That same motivation lay behind making giant copies of the Altamira and Lascaux Caves in Spain and France , respectively , when exposure to the elements , and awestruck visitors ' breath , threatened to turn the vast galleries of prehistoric paintings they contain into mold . The motive for replicating other tourist attractions around the world , however , seems less concerned with their heritage value . If you think the Eiffel Tower is intimately associated with Paris , for example , you may be surprised to find more or less life-size versions of it in Las Vegas , Berlin , India , China ( two , actually -- in Hangzhou and Shenzhen ) and Fez , Morocco . More : 14 great literary hotels . The Taj Mahal , one of India 's great tourist sights , is no longer one of just India 's great tourist sights . A full-sized replica of the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan 's monument to his beloved third wife has sat outside the Bangladeshi capital , Dhaka , since 2008 . India has taken revenge , of a sort -- it 's planning an Angkor Wat for the banks of the Ganges . Michelangelo 's `` Davids '' When it comes to art , anatomically accurate copies of Michelangelo 's `` David '' expose themselves everywhere from the Philippines to the U.S. state of Kentucky and Montevideo , Uruguay . In China , the Xerox of replicating countries , you can even take home your own fairly convincing Mona Lisa or Van Gogh from the Dafen oil painting village , a neighborhood of Shenzhen famed for its fakes . China , moreover , has recreated entire foreign locales with tourist appeal , such as London Thames Town , in Shanghai , and Hallstatt , an `` Austrian '' mountain village in that famous yodeling province of Guangdong . What , you can only ask , is next -- a Chinese Belgium or New Zealand ? And would anybody go ? Facsimile tourism -- as good as the real thing ? Let us know in the comments .
Minutely detailed replica of Egyptian boy king 's burial chamber opens to public in Egypt this month . Hi-tech reproduction technique involved scanning 100 million points per square meter . Comment: