dark tourism, noun: "tourism involving travel to sites historically associated with death and tragedy" (Wikipedia).
The term was coined in a 1996 report published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies, entitled “JFK and Dark Tourism: a fascination with assassination”. As authors Malcolm Foley and J. John Lennon suggest in the title, the term was born out of an investigation of sites related to John F. Kennedy’s life and death, that had been turned into tourist “destinations”. Foley and Lennon were interested in the legitimacy and ethics of how these sites were presented, both by the tourism bodies and the media.
Foley and Lennon explain dark tourism as: “positioned at the cross-roads of the recent history of inhuman acts and the representation of these in news and film media. Interpretations of such events and their commercial development or exploitation are central to consideration of this area.”
But the business of touring places associated with death or tragedy is nothing new: “war tourists” flocked to see battles at Gettysburg or Waterloo, and now commercial enterprises have sprung up around the Syrian civil war and the Gaza Strip. There is even the Dark Tourism Institute in London, founded in 2012, which chronicles and researches the effects of such tourism.*
The following are a few examples of "Dark Tourism" sites, where tourism is explicitly condoned. Share your own Dark Tourism spots in the comments.
The National September 11 Memorial in New York City:
Crematoria at Auschwitz's death camp, in what is now Poland:
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, site of disastrous 1986 nuclear accident (pictured in June 2013):
3 Comments
I guess after reading the description of the term Dealey Plaza in Dallas comes to mind. The city goes the extra mile to keep that X nice and bright regardless the decrepit state of street markings in the rest of the city. Iwo Jima was another for me, although it would hardly count as a destination for explicit tourism...
The Lenin Mausoleum in Moscow is a great example. It was mandated by the government that Soviet citizens made the pilgrimage and honor the sleeping leader (and subsequently the architectural object).
Look at those lines! And not a churro stand in sight...
I visited the mausoleum in 2002, and there was hardly any line anymore. Just a 10 minute wait, all while being observed by angry-looking honor guard dudes with their kalashnikovs.
Amazing Alex, thanks for posting! Perfect example, and totally creepy Lenin.
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