The visible and ultraviolet spectroscopy of gas phase rhodamine 575 cations has been: studied experirnentally by action-spectroscopy in a modified linear ion trap between 220 and 590 nm and by time-dependent density functional theory (TDDVT) calculations: Three bands are observed that can, be,assigned to the electronic transitions S-0 --> S-1, S-0 --> S-3, and S-0 --> (S-8,S-9) according to the theoretical prediction. While the agreement between theory and experiment is excellent for the S-3 and S-8/S-9 transitions, a large shift in the value of the calculated S-1 transition energy is observed. A theoretical analysis of thermochromism, potential vibronic, effects, and-qualitatively-electron correlation revealed it is mainly the latter that is responsible for the failure of TDDFT to accurately reproduce the S-1 transition energy, and that a significant thermochromic shift is also present. Finally, we investigated the nature of the excited states by analyzing the excitations and discussed their different fragmentation behavior. We hypothesize that different contributions of local versus charge transfer excitations are responsible for 1-photon versus 2-photon fragmentation observed experimentally.