Categories of dark tourism
The basic concept of dark tourism (see also:
what is dark tourism), its short-hand definition, as it were, stipulates that it involves sites associated with death and disaster (or the seemingly macabre). But that can take very different forms:
Disasters can be natural, industrial or both (environmental disasters, for instance, may have been caused by human interference – see e.g. the
Aral Sea). Disasters can result in humanitarian catastrophes, like the 2004
Tsunami, or, while being spectacularly destructive, not actually cause any deaths at all – e.g. the Eldfell eruptions on
Heimaey,
Iceland – even though much of the town was destroyed by the lava flows, nobody was killed.
Sites of death can be graves, cemeteries, mausoleums, ossuaries, i.e. places where there are actual mortal remains. They may be more abstractly sites where deaths happened, such as assassination sites (e.g. the
Sixth Floor Museum in
Dallas, where JFK was shot). Or both at the same time – e.g. the
Cambodian Killing Fields memorial site (with its stupa full of skulls).
Some distinct subcategories that I believe can be discerned include:
There is a degree of overlap, of course, both between these categories as well as
overlap with other forms of tourism. Under the
list of destinations ordered by categories the above types are also split up into even more subcategories, which increases the overlap. But that's no bad thing, as it is perfectly normal for a given site to be of interest to the traveller for more than one reason. So the overlap simply reflects reality (this is not about neat "scientific" classification in any case).
Genocide tourism – the Nazis' genocide of European Jewry (i.e. the
Holocaust) was far from the only such case (though certainly the worst); more recent horrors of genocidal magnitude have put other destinations on the dark tourism map too, esp.
Rwanda,
Cambodia,
Srebrenica.
Communism tourism – very niche and more weird than dark are e.g. museums of communism and
socialist realist art displays (e.g. in
Berlin,
Prague or
Budapest), some looking more at the lighter, quirky sides of the communist era of the past, some overlapping into the darker aspect of persecution (see the above category); in some places you can even go on dedicated communism package tours, e.g. in
Bulgaria – and then there's extreme tourism in the form of travel to places that still are staunchly communist today, most notably
North Korea.
Visiting the grand mausoleums of communist leaders of old also falls into this category (and overlaps with
grave tourism), especially the
Big Four: Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh and, last but by no means least:
North Korea's Kims'.
Cult of personality tourism – overlaps with the above as far as communist leaders are concerned but goes beyond. In some cases, it's a cult of personality of long or recently deceased leaders (e.g.
Turkey's
Atatürk or
Turkmenistan's
Turkmenbashy, respectively), in others the personality in question is still alive (e.g. in
Kazakhstan). One may also include former cults of personality, of (deceased) ex-leaders of states which no longer exist in that form, e.g. the former
GDR's
Erich Honecker, or
Albania's
Enver Hoxha – in such cases, however, there may not be much left for the so-inclined dark tourist to savour. However, you do get quite an astonishing amount of ex-cult-leader merchandise in many such cases (e.g. the
Stalin mugs sold in the gift shops at
Grutas Park)
Cold War & Iron Curtain tourism – seeking out traces and remains of the
Berlin Wall, for instance, or border museums along the former
Iron Curtain. Visiting old nuclear bunkers now opened to the public can also be considered part of this (e.g.
Hack Green or at
The Greenbrier). Another aspect is sites even more directly associated with the threat of nuclear war that defined the deterrent strategy that was at the core of the concept of the Cold War, e.g. atomic bomb test sites (such as
Semipalatinsk) or
ICBMs on display (e.g. at the
USAF Museum) – this overlaps with parts of nuclear tourism.
Nuclear tourism ('atomic tourism') – apart from sites of nuclear testing (
Semipalatinsk in
Kazakhstan,
Bikini, or the
NTS in the
USA), or missile silos (e.g.
Titan Missile Museum, Arizona), there's also the two places where
atom bombs where actually used for real:
Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. There are also dedicated museums, in those Japanese cities as well as in the
USA. Furthermore, there are sites of non-military nuclear disasters, most notably
Chernobyl in
Ukraine (or cf.
Harrisburg,
USA). Surprisingly many of the world's other "civilian" nuclear plants (which haven't, yet, seen any major accidents) have visitor centres too (cf.
Kozloduy,
Bulgaria). Sites of nuclear waste storage or more imminently looming nuclear disasters are usually inaccessible for the public (the
nuclear submarine graveyard near Murmansk,
Russia, is a case in point), and/or are
places not to visit from a
health and safety point of view (e.g.
Mayak).
Disaster area tourism – partly overlaps with
nuclear tourism, but also encompasses places of other man-made or natural disasters. Of the latter, sites of volcanic destruction (
Pompeii,
Montserrat,
Mount St Helens, etc.) tend to remain visitable for longer periods of time after the events, whereas the traces of many other kinds of natural disasters, such as floods, storms, fires, earthquakes, etc., are often only temporary. Rapid rebuilding usually leaves no sites for tourists to visit. (There are a few exceptions, e.g. the
Tsunami monument/ruins in Yala National Park,
Sri Lanka.) And before such rebuilding/recovery, i.e. while the disaster is still current, it may not be
ethical to go to such places – voyeuristic disaster tourism is certainly something NOT to be promoted (while voluntary aid and relief work is welcome – but that's not really tourism). There can be borderline cases, where such disaster viewing may actually be encouraged by the locals, such as at the
mud volcano of Sidoarjo,
Indonesia. But it is a touchy issue. See in general:
ethical issues.
Icky medical tourism – not travelling for one's own medical treatment somewhere (that's medical tourism proper) but going – for "fun"! – to see exhibitions such as the
Josephinum in
Vienna,
Austria, or the
Mütter Museum in
Philadelphia,
USA, which displays e.g. longitudinal slices of heads (showing the brain), medical monstrosities such as deformed babies, specimens of outsized parasites (tapeworms etc.) and other such things that make most people cringe but that still exude a strange appeal to many. A similarly famous museum in this category is the
Meguro Parasitological Museum in
Tokyo – the only one of its specialist kind. The "Bodies Exhibition" of recent years is also a good example. In many cases the exhibits are "real" and thus are clearly connected to death – in other cases the exhibits are just models, but still, if they're life-like (or shall I say "death-like") that's close enough. Both ultimately involve "
dead on display".
You can divide the categories of dark tourism further into even more sub-groups:
- the '
Dungeons' exhibitions (kind of dark amusement parks/-halls)
