Dark tourism (also black tourism or grief tourism) is tourism involving travel to sites associated with death and tragedy. Thanatourism, derived from the Ancient Greek word thanatos for the personification of death, is associated with dark tourism but refers more specifically to violent death; it is used in fewer contexts than the terms dark tourism and grief tourism. The main draw however to these locations is mostly due to their historical value rather than their associations with death and suffering.
This includes castles and battlefields such as Culloden in Scotland and Bran Castle and Poienari Castle in Romania; sites of disaster, either natural or man made, such as Hiroshima in Japan, Chornobyl in Ukraine and the Ground Zero in New York; Auschwitz in Poland; prisons now open to the public such as Beaumaris Prison in Anglesey, Wales; and purpose built centers such as the London Dungeon, the Spirit Lake Internment Camp centre (near La Ferme, Quebec) and other sites associated with Canada's first national internment operations. It also includes other sites of human atrocities and genocide, such as the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall in Nanjing and the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Cambodia.
Read more about Dark Tourism: As A Field, Other Viewpoints
Famous quotes containing the words dark and/or tourism:
“Coming about its own business
Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.”
—Ted Hughes (b. 1930)
“In the middle ages people were tourists because of their religion, whereas now they are tourists because tourism is their religion.”
—Robert Runcie (b. 1921)