JAKARTA - While some people go on vacation to rest and relax, others prefer to travel to destinations associated with horror and the macabre.
Dark tourism is a type of travel that involves visiting places associated with death, disaster, tragedy, or suffering. These places can be battlefields, prisons, cemeteries, concentration camps, or museums dedicated to tragic events.
"This is not a new phenomenon," said J. John Lennon, professor of tourism at Glasgow Caledonian University, as reported by The Washington Post on Thursday, August 21.
"There's evidence that dark tourism originated with the Battle of Waterloo, where people watched the battle from their horse-drawn carriages." Lennon and his colleague, Malcolm Foley, are credited with coining the term dark tourism in 1996, and together they wrote the book *Dark Tourism: The Attraction to Death and Disaster*.
In recent years, visits to Civil War battlefields and sites like Auschwitz have even increased, perhaps because tourists want to better understand some of history's most tragic chapters. Here are some of the most famous horror tourist destinations from around the world, according to Mental Floss.
Ruins of Pompeii - Pompeii, Italy
In the autumn of 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted with the force of 100,000 atomic bombs, releasing toxic gases, ash, and other volcanic debris into the air. The eruption then devastated surrounding towns such as Herculaneum and Pompeii. Nearly 2,000 years later, the ruins of Pompeii, part of the Vesuvius National Park, have become one of Italy's most popular tourist attractions, largely due to the volcanic ash deposits that coated and preserved the ancient city.
A number of guided tours and excursions take visitors to historical sites around the ruins, frozen in time, such as the Pompeii Archaeological Park, the Forum, the Teatro Grande, and more.
Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum - Oświęcim, Poland
One of the most horrific places in the world to visit is the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, opened in 1947 in Oświęcim, Poland. Auschwitz was the largest Nazi concentration camp during World War II. An estimated 1.3 million people were sent there before 1945. It was also the site of mass genocide, where more than 1.1 million people, including over 960,000 Jews, were murdered or died from diseases such as typhus, tuberculosis, and dysentery. Poor sanitary conditions also led to problems such as scurvy, and many prisoners suffered from boils, rashes, and abscesses, many of which were caused by vitamin deficiencies.
Today, Auschwitz is a monument and museum dedicated to history, education, and memorializing the atrocities committed against fellow human beings.
National September 11 Memorial and Museum - New York City, New York
Since the terrorist attacks that destroyed the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, people from around the world have flocked to New York City's Financial District to pay their respects to the nearly 3,000 lives lost at Ground Zero.
In fact, according to a 2022 survey by Passport Photo Online, Ground Zero is one of the world's most popular dark tourism destinations. The National September 11 Memorial and Museum, which opened in 2014, features two reflecting pools containing the largest man-made waterfall in North America, where the Twin Towers once stood. The names of each victim are engraved on bronze panels surrounding each one-acre pool. The museum itself showcases artifacts, personal stories, special exhibits, and more. There is also an exhibit focusing on the World Trade Center bombing that occurred on February 26, 1993.
The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek - Phnom Penh, Cambodia
From 1974 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge regime killed more than 1 million political prisoners in Cambodia (about a quarter of the country's population), burying their remains in mass graves known as "killing fields." The largest killing field was Choeung Ek, located on the outskirts of Phnom Penh. The site was formerly an orchard and Chinese cemetery before the Khmer Rouge used it for mass killings.
In 1980, after the regime was overthrown, the remains of nearly 9,000 people were exhumed from mass graves around Choeung Ek (although some graves were left intact). Approximately 8,000 skulls removed from these graves are now displayed behind glass panels in the Choeung Ek memorial stupa, a Buddhist-style structure erected in 1988 to commemorate the fallen.
In 2019, more than 250,000 visitors, a combination of international tourists and Cambodians, visited the site. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, approximately 300 to 600 visitors visited daily. Visitation dropped dramatically after 2020 due to the site's closure, but in 2022, more than 45,000 foreign visitors and over 21,000 Cambodians visited. Furthermore, the Choeung Ek Genocide Center is a focal point each year during Cambodia's National Remembrance Day, which is observed on May 20.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum - Hiroshima, Japan
Since its opening in August 1955, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Hiroshima, Japan, has been dedicated to preserving the stories, photographs, and other artifacts that depict the unimaginable terror and loss of life the city experienced after being subjected to the world's first atomic bombing on August 6, 1945.
The museum welcomes approximately 1 million visitors annually. Inside, you'll find survivor testimonies and exhibits depicting the horrors of war and the destructive nature of nuclear weapons. As the museum explains, "Every exhibit reflects the grief, anger, or pain of real people. After recovering from the atomic bombing, Hiroshima's deepest hope is the abolition of all nuclear weapons and the establishment of a truly peaceful international community."
The Catacombs of Paris - Paris, France
During the 18th century, Paris faced a major public health problem: local cemeteries were overcrowded and improper disposal of bodies was fueling the spread of disease. In response, the city decided to convert its underground Lutetian limestone quarries into a vast underground ossuary.
Located approximately 20 meters beneath the streets of the City of Light, Les Catacombes de Paris (aka the Paris Catacombs) house the remains of more than 6 million Parisians from the late 16th century. Today, visitors can take guided tours and learn about its unique history, while admiring the millions of human skulls and bones lining the walls of the cavernous chambers.
Alcatraz Federal Prison - Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay, California
It may come as a surprise, but one of San Francisco's most popular tourist attractions is technically located in San Francisco Bay, on Alcatraz Island. Better known to some as "The Rock," Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary was once a maximum-security federal prison that closed in 1963. However, before that, it housed several notorious inmates, including Al Capone, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, James "Whitey" Bulger, and others.
Over the decades, Alcatraz has been immortalized in pop culture through music and film. Today, the prison is also considered a US National Park and is visited by over 1.5 million people annually. Tourists can take guided tours of the main cells, dining hall, lighthouse, and other locations around the prison grounds.
Chernobyl - Pripyat, Ukraine
On April 26, 1986, nuclear reactor number four at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Pripyat, Ukraine, exploded, leaving the area uninhabited and devastated. Although currently unsafe to visit due to the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War, the site of the world's worst nuclear disaster has become a favorite destination for dark tourism since 2011, when the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone was opened for visits.
Pripyat is now a ghost town with abandoned schools, hospitals, apartment buildings, and more. There is also an abandoned amusement park with a Ferris wheel and toy cars. Scientists estimate it will take up to 20,000 years for the land to fully recover from radioactive damage. However, previously, short-term, highly regulated guided tours were allowed throughout the exclusion zone. Strict safety measures, such as wearing tight clothing and using Geiger counters, were in place to prevent radiation poisoning. In 2019, an estimated 200,000 tourists visited the site.
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