Top 10 dark tourism sites
by popularity
1. National 9/11 Memorial & Museum, 'Ground Zero' (9/11 site), New York, USA (ca. 4-5 million visitors a year!)
2. Auschwitz, site of the best-known concentration camp/death camp, near Krakow, Poland (now over 2 million visitors a year)
3. Alcatraz, San Francisco, USA (over 1.5 million visitors annually)
4. Pearl Harbor/USS Arizona memorial site, Hawaii, USA (ca. 1.5 million vistors per year!)
6. Berlin – sites of the Wall, Checkpoint Charlie museum, etc., Germany
7. Arlington national cemetery, Washington D.C., USA
8. the Paris catacombs, France
9. Anne Frank House, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (well over 1 million visitors per annum)
NOTE: this is only an approximation, and only partially based on exact statistics of visitor numbers etc. (only for a few sites are such figures available at all!). One also has to take into account that absolute numbers would say very little in the first place – e.g. millions of tourists visit cities such as London or New York, but how many of those go there for dark tourism? Only a relatively small proportion, I would guess (only in the case of Berlin may that actually be different). So this list couldn't be based on statistical figures even if they were available in any consistent form.
Instead, this list represents a bit of a mix of criteria – vistor numbers AND perceived awareness of the places in question in general popular culture and/or general tourism.
I'm the first to concede that this list is the most volatile and least definite of all the lists suggested on this website. In fact, I positively invide constructive criticism here. If anyone has any better idea of how to ascertain criteria for this list, then feel free to contact me!
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