Reenactment and LARP

Reenactment is an activity where people recreate or commemorate historical epochs and events through dramatization, costumes, props, staging, and/or authentic environments.

Live-action roleplaying, shortened LARP (not to be confused with its other meaning), can have contemporary or fictional settings, but is often based on historical periods, commonly Medieval Europe. Here people are improvising and immersing in their role, rather than playing by a pre-written plot. The focus can be on adventures and fights or more on the social interaction. The plot can be inspired by various historical or fictional genres, such as fantasy, science fiction, horror fiction or military history. Scenarios similar to the LARP ones can be played out as tabletop roleplaying games (RPGs), and many groups practice both.

Living history museums are settlements, authentic or reconstructed, in a historical setting; often from the early modern period (15th to 19th centuries). Historic sites will often have guides in period costume to explain the historic context of a venue.

The Society for Creative Anachronism or SCA is a large group — as of 2014, 30,000 paid members and about twice that many participants in their events each year — that aims to recreate medieval Europe "as it should have been", including much of the beauty and pageantry but without plagues, inquisitions etc.

In some historical districts, free-lancers pose in period costumes, to tout for restaurants and other venues, or charge money for group photos. These are sometimes seen as tourist traps or scammers, and have been prohibited at sites such as the Colosseum in Rome.