The first part of your question seems different than the second part and I feel that would need a different wording.

The feeling you get when you are close to history, e.g. in a castle or even just on the street imagining what it was like hundreds of years ago, was famously called "historical sensation" by Johan Huizinga. Although the translation does exist and is correct, I'm not sure to what extent this is used in English. In Dutch it is the dominant term for that feeling.