Dark tourism is part of the most recent travel trends. Also known as Black Tourism or Tanaturismit is a controversial practice, because it has to do with visiting the places where deaths, tragedies, disasters or that exhibit the history of tragic moments in history occurred. He does not seek to create morbid around the facts, or, to romantize the worst moments of the planet, but to show a bit of the story that we are not always told.
Dark tourism has occurred for years, but the term was more recently defined.Gabriel Castles / UNSPLASH
What is the origin of dark tourism?
Dark tourism is nothing newthe most obvious antecedent is in the golden age of Roman society, when the busiest activity was to attend the Colosseum to see violent shows, or when the Catholic Church towards public demonstrations by exercising punishment, especially in the Middle Ages and people attended by mere taste.
According to an article of the Eve Museum, the definition as such was used by researchers Malcolm Foley and J. John Lennon to describe «the phenomenon of the presentation and consumption of disaster sites with real and marketed deaths, excluding family and friends who visit these places.» Foley and Lennon talk about the subject in greater depth in their book Dark Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disasterand from there several researchers continued with the study and explanation of this phenomenon and making it broader, trying to. The idea is to understand why attraction this type of places occurs more frequently every time. Well, in addition to knowing history, it is also a social phenomenon.
So, Dark tourism has evolved over the years and includes from destinations with very tragic stories, to visits to historical places with less violence. In the same article of Foley and Lennon, there is talk of the researcher Tony Seaton and his five categories of activities related to this type of trip: