Tag: Dark Tourism
100 cursed places found
Rumbula
A memorial commemorating one of the worst massacres perpetrated in the Holocaust by the Nazi Einsatzgruppen against the Jews of Latvia , when on just two...
Bali bombing memorial
The main memorial site in Kuta, Bali, commemorating the terrorist bombing attacks of October 2002 which killed over 200 people, mostly tourists,...
Nyamata, Rwanda
Nyamata Genocide Memorial - One of the National Genocide Memorials in Rwanda β and one that really makes you gasp for breath β second only to Murambi .
Magadan
gulag sites and ghost towns - Amongst the most exotic destinations it is (just about) possible to travel to as a tourist β far out in Asian Russia , in...
Museum of the President's Cultural Centre of Kazakhstan, Astana
(the former) Museum of the President's Cultural Centre of Kazakhstan ( ) [UPDATE 2022: since Nazabayev stepped down as president, and has by now also been...
Okawa School Memorial
Okawa Elementary School - The ruins of a school that was especially badly, and exceptionally tragically, hit by the 2011 tsunami disaster in Japan .
Eastern State Penitentiary, Philadelphia
A large former prison and an imposing hilltop landmark in Philadelphia , USA .
PLTD Apung 1
stranded power generating ship, Banda Aceh This is the second most important tsunami-related sight in Banda Aceh (after the Tsunami Museum ).
Murambi, Rwanda
Murambi genocide memorial - Possibly the darkest, starkest, grimmest, most shocking site it is possible to visit as a dark tourist on planet Earth.
Unit 731 Museum
This has to be one of the darkest places on Earth.
Ilha dos Tigres
And absolutely unique and extremely atmospheric place, and the crown jewel in Angola βs dark-tourism portfolio β the only problem is that it is very...
Los Alamos
Bradbury Science Museum, Los Alamos Los Alamos is the place where the USA 's very first nuclear weapons were developed in the Manhattan Project .
Delhi
The capital city of India β and one of the largest (and most polluted) metropolises in the world.
Qobustan mud volcanoes, Azerbaijan
Mud volcanoes of Qobustan A really bizarre sight that is almost unique to Azerbaijan : bubbling, spitting, leaking, oozing, grey mud volcanoes.
Jerusalem
Nominally, Jerusalem is today the capital city of Israel but has long been, and still is, one of the most contested places in all of history.
Ligatne Soviet bunker
A marvellous Cold War relic from the Soviet era in Latvia β a formerly secret government bunker from where the Soviet administrative affairs were supposed...
Spitak
This town in northern Armenia was nearest to the epicentre of the devastating earthquake of 1988 that was accordingly named after Spitak β even though the...
Parque de la Memoria Buenos Aires
Parque de la Memoria, Buenos Aires A memorial on the edge of Buenos Aires that commemorates the "disappeared" in particular and the whole topic of...
Buenos Aires
The capital city of Argentina and one of Latin America's mega-metropolises (with some 12 million inhabitants) and main cultural hubs.
Srebrenica
PotoΔari memorial site The memorial for what is known as the Srebrenica massacre, or even Srebrenica genocide , committed in July 1995 by Bosnian Serbs...
9th Fort
and Monument, Kaunas The top dark site in the area of Kaunas , Lithuania , hands down. In fact it's three sites in one, as it were.
Kozloduy nuclear power plant
A large nuclear power station in Bulgaria β and until a few years ago one of the potentially most dangerous nuclear installations in the world.
Villa Grimaldi - Parque por la Paz
Villa Grimaldi β Parque por la Paz The site of a former clandestine detention and torture centre under the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile from 1973, and...
Grafeneck euthanasia centre
One of the six "euthanasia" centres of Operation T4 , the Nazis ' programme of systematically murdering mentally ill and disabled people during the Third...
Eichsfeld border land museum
Yet another of Germany 's border museums on the former Iron Curtain division line between the FRG (West) and GDR (East).
Heligoland
Heligoland (Helgoland in German) is one of the coolest places that Germany has to offer β even though, strictly speaking, it isn't actually in Germany :...
MaarjamΓ€e memorial complex
There are three distinct points of interest here.
D-Day sites in Normandy
D-Day museums and memorials in Normandy The β D-Day β landings of Operation Overload, i.e.
Bullenhuser Damm
memorial A relatively small but extremely moving memorial site in Hamburg , Germany .
White Rose memorial museum Munich
White Rose memorial DenkStΓ€tte WeiΓe Rose A small memorial museum in Munich dedicated to the "WeiΓe Rose" resistance movement in Nazi Germany during WWII...
Vinh Moc tunnels, Vietnam
Vinh Moc tunnels, Central Vietnam Another network of tunnels and underground dug-outs near the DMZ , in Central Vietnam .
Dresden
A city in the south-east of Germany that is in the dark annals of world history primarily as the victim of one of the worst aerial bombing raids in the...
Trinity
It was here, in the middle of the desert of the White Sands range in southern New Mexico, USA , that the first ever atomic bomb was detonated β in a test...
Halifax, Nova Scotia
A harbour town on the east coast of Nova Scotia, Canada , whose maritime heritage includes a couple of particularly dark ones.
MΓΌnchner Platz Memorial, Dresden
( for German speakers ) Part of a former courthouse and prison in Dresden , Germany , that was used as an execution site both by the Nazis in the Third...
Fragonard Museum
Paris The Fragonard Museum, or Musee Fragonard, which is part of Paris 's veterinary university Ecole nationale veterinaire d'Alfort (ENVA for short), is...
Gori war museum
( if you can read Russian) A small museum in the Georgian town of Gori , which is better known for its large Stalin Museum .
EL-DE Haus
NS-Dokumentationszentrum A former Gestapo HQ and prison in Cologne , west Germany , and now also home to the city's documentation centre about the Nazi...
Monument to the 1973 uprising, Bangkok
A monument to and exhibition about the violent clashes between protesters and government forces in 1973, near the Democracy Monument, where protesters...
stranded boats in Banda Aceh
In addition to the big PLTD Apung 1 , many smaller vessels, especially fishing boats, were also carried inland by the 2004 tsunami in Banda Aceh .
Aso
Mt Aso, Kyushu ----------------- UPDATE 10 October 2016: I've just heard that Mt Aso has sprung to life again in an explosive eruption and that access to...
Absheron peninsula, Azerbaijan
Absheron peninsula to (overall; individually between 1 for Arteshgah, and 8 for Artyom) A semi-desert promontory that pokes out eastwards into the Caspian...
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
The central memorial space dedicated to commemorating the A-bombing of Hiroshima .
BallinStadt emigration museum
Hamburg A museum chronicling the waves of emigration from Europe to the New World, mostly the USA , as well as migration in general.
Bismarck monument Hamburg
Bismarck monument, Hamburg Basically a colossal stone figure of Otto von Bismarck in Hamburg .
GroΓ-Rosen
Though less well known than, say, Dachau or Buchenwald , Gross-Rosen was also one of the main large concentration camps in what was then Nazi Germany .
Banjica
A small museum in Belgrade commemorating one of Nazi Germany 's concentration camps in the Balkans during the occupation of Serbia in WWII from June 1941.
Chuquicamata copper mine
This is a truly extreme attraction in northern Chile : the gigantic open-pit copper mine and adjacent smelter plant at Chuquicamata, in the Atacama...
Cape Town
The second capital of South Africa (officially the first is Pretoria, but parliament, government and president are partially based in Cape Town too).
Colditz
Possibly the most famous German POW prison of WWII , thanks to the legend of high-profile escapes that have been celebrated in books and films, especially...
Churchill War Rooms
London The underground bunker rooms in Whitehall, London , which served as the secret headquarters for Winston Churchill and his war cabinet from where...
Hoxha pyramid, Tirana, Albania
Hoxha pyramid A rather bizarre building in the middle of Albania 's capital city Tirana .
Soviet Tallinn
(non-guided) (guided) Like most cities that once formed part of the Soviet empire (whether as a member of the USSR itself or one of the Eastern Bloc...
Ho Chi Minh Museum, Hanoi
Ho Chi Minh Museum (but weirdness factor 10!) A museum in Hanoi , Vietnam , about the country's deceased great communist leader.
Museo Criminologico
(crime museum), Rome An unusual and rather little known specialist museum in central Rome that is about the wider subject of crime and punishment.
Plac Solidarnosci
Plac SolidarnoΕci The area outside the main gates to the GdaΕsk shipyards, famous as the backdrop for crucial parts of the media coverage of the trade...
Chiran Kamikaze museum
& shrine The premier memorial space in Japan devoted to those 'special attack groups' known as Kamikaze pilots.
Karosta, Liepaja
Karosta - former naval base, Liepaja The formerly closed garrison town and Soviet naval base that takes up the northern part of the coastal city of...
Montserrat Volcano Observatory (MVO)
The official site from where a team of volcanologists monitor Montserrat 's Soufriere Hills volcano's activity and hazards.
Sorge open-air border museum
Another border museum on the former line of division between Germany East ( GDR ) and West ( FRG ) during the era of the Iron Curtain and the Cold War .
Ebro
to Roughly the area of north-eastern Spain /Catalonia where the Battle of the Ebro was fought in the Spanish Civil War .
Beachy Head
England A chalk headland on the south coast of Great Britain that is notorious as the country's foremost suicide cliff.
Gori, Georgia
A town north-west of Georgia 's capital Tbilisi , and famous as the birthplace of Josef Stalin .
National Museum of Funeral History Houston
National Museum of Funeral History A museum in the north of Houston, Texas, USA , whose descriptive name sufficiently gives away what it is about: funeral...
Jallianwala Bagh
Massacre Site A memorial complex and park in the heart of Amritsar , Punjab, north-western India , which in 1919 was the site of one of the worst...
Heimaey
Heimaey is the name of the largest and only inhabited island of the Vestmannaeyjar archipelago ("Westman Islands" in English) just off the south coast of...
Kobariski muzej
KobariΕ‘ki Muzej A multiple-award-winning museum in Kobarid , Slovenia , about World War One and in particular about the Isonzo Front.
Fjaerland glacier museum
A modern museum in Norway near Europe's largest mainland glacier, Jostedalsbreen, which is also the museum's main topic.
Tafjord
The site of yet another disastrous landslide causing a tsunami in a fjord in Norway (cf.
Falstad Centre
This is the main memorial (as well as research/educational) centre in Norway about the camps for political prisoners, POWs and Jews that were established...
Stutthof concentration camp
The concentration camp that the Nazis set up at the start of World War II for the Danzig/ Gdansk area, as the first such camp in what is today Poland .
KoΕ‘ice
The second largest city in Slovakia , after the capital Bratislava , and another industrial centre of the country (but also a university town).
Kanchanaburi, Thailand
A provincial capital city in the western region of Thailand of the same name.
Barringer Meteor Crater
This site has to be regarded as the quintessential meteorite crater on Earth.
Dallas Holocaust Museum
Another Holocaust Museum in the USA , this one is in Dallas , Texas.
Bradford
West Yorkshire A city in the north of England, Great Britain , with a fairly bad, kind of "dark" reputation, though only part of this is justified, but...
Coventry Cathedral
The new and old Cathedral in the city of Coventry, Great Britain .
Preah Vihear
Cambodia An ancient mountain-top temple complex on the Cambodia - Thailand border, the possession of which has long been contested, despite an...
Meguro Parasitological Museum
A small specialist medical museum in Japan 's capital Tokyo β in fact it's said to be the world's only museum dedicated to the singe topic of parasites.
Recoleta cemetery
La Recoleta cemetery A famous cemetery, acclaimed for its atmospheric tomb architecture, and a major tourist site in Argentina 's capital city of Buenos...
Pasterze
glacier The (still) largest glacier in Austria , and one of the most scenic glacial tongues in the whole of the Alps.
Anti-War Museum
A small private museum in Berlin with a big mission: promoting pacifism and β as the name implies β "fighting" against all war.
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church ruins & memorial hall
Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church ruins The landmark WWII church ruin in West Berlin , the main tower left in its semi-collapsed state to serve as a...
Behrungen border memorial sites
An ensemble of relics of the former " Iron Curtain " in Germany , i.e.
Sandbostel POW camp
memorial A former Nazi WWII camp for POW s, later overflow concentration camp , in fact one of the most significant such sites in northern Germany .
Harnekop nuclear bunker
Lost places: Harnekop nuclear bunker [ ] UPDATE: sadly, this place has now closed down, since it passed into new hands.
Enola Gay
The "Enola Gay" (for the plane alone; for the whole museum) This is the original B-29 bomber plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima β now an...
Chicago
The third-largest city in the USA , (after New York and L.A. ) and one of its most spectacular as far as skyline (skyscrapers!) and location are concerned.
House of the Wannsee Conference
On the surface just a stately villa in a pretty lake-side outer district of Berlin β but for its significance in the planning of the darkest chapter of...
Cambodian Landmine Museum
Landmine Museum A small private museum run by an ex-soldier-turned-mine-clearer alongside an NGO/charity near Siem Reap (Angkor), Cambodia .
Kurchatov
Kazakhstan - darkometer rating : formerly 8 - now possibly no more than 5 or 6 ...
Titanic
The wreck of the Titanic, North Atlantic --------------------------------------- UPDATE 23 June 2023: a deep-sea submersible (called "Titan") taking...
MΓΆdlareuth border museum
UPDATE: a new museum building at this site has opened on 9 November 2025. I guess I'll have to go on a revisit to check this out at some point.
Oradour-sur-Glane
A former village in France which in WWII was virtually wiped out on 10 June 1944 when SS -soldiers (of the "Das Reich" unit) massacred nearly the entire...
Bad Sachsa border land museum
A small museum on the theme of the former " Iron Curtain " border between East Germany ( GDR ) and West Germany.
Andersgrotta, Kirkenes
Andersgrotta Kind of a cross between a cave and an underground bunker in Kirkenes , northern Norway .
A-Bomb Dome
The ruins of the former "Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall", gutted by the atomic bomb β ever since it has been THE landmark of Hiroshima ,...
USAF Museum Dayton
USAF Museum with the "Bockscar" A huge museum in Dayton, Ohio, of (mostly) US military aircraft, the star piece of which, from a dark perspective, has to...
Belzec
BeΕΕΌec BeΕΕΌec was one of the three death camps purpose-built by the Nazis in the east of Poland as part of " Operation Reinhard ", which was the code name...
Barcelona
(at present) - The capital city of the βautonomousβ Catalonia province in north-eastern Spain (at least as long as Catalonia doesn't achieve actual...