Earlier this year, India unveiled Bharat Ranbhoomi Darshan—a bold new initiative turning historic and active battlefields into immersive tourist destinations. Launched by the Ministry of Defence in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism, the project opens up 77 sites, including Galwan and Doklam, inviting civilians to walk the very grounds where courage was tested and history was made. No longer just names in headlines or history books, these war zones will now tell their stories up close—of grit and sacrifice.
Once the domain of historians, war correspondents, or pilgrims of loss, travel to places marked by death, disaster, or collective grief, has become mainstream. Today, instead of poolside cocktails, travellers seek out scars. They stand in silence beneath the rusted gates of Auschwitz in Poland. They wander through the radioactive ruins of Chernobyl, Ukraine. They visit memorials in Rwanda, grappling with the legacy of genocide. “Dark tourism is contemporary travel to places linked with the ‘noteworthy dead’. These sites reflect difficult heritage—pain, shame, cultural trauma—shaped by the politics of remembrance,” says Dr Philip Stone, director of the Institute for Dark Tourism Research at the University of Central Lancashire.
While it may seem unsettling at first glance, dark tourism is rooted in humanity’s enduring fascination with mortality, memory, and morality. These journeys are not merely about seeing places of death but engaging with the emotional and historical weight they carry. It challenges visitors to confront existential questions about life, death, and human responsibility. According to existentialist thinkers like Martin Heidegger, acknowledging death is a path toward living authentically. When people visit sites of tragedy, they are often compelled to reflect on the fragility of life and the enduring consequences of human cruelty. Dark tourism also serves as a tool for historical education, ensuring that atrocities are neither forgotten nor repeated. It is a mirror held up to humanity, reflecting both its darkest impulses and its capacity for remembrance, empathy, and moral growth.
Standing at the gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the infamous phrase “Arbeit macht frei” looms overhead. Beyond it stretches row upon row of barracks, once filled with human suffering. You pass a room filled with shoes, another with children’s clothes, and yet another with human hair. Each object speaks of a life, a person, a story abruptly ended.
Thousands of miles away, in northern Ukraine, an entirely different shadow looms. The town of Pripyat stands frozen in time. Nature is slowly reclaiming the Soviet-era buildings. In 1986, the explosion of Reactor No. 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant turned this once-thriving community into a ghost town overnight. Today, visitors walk through empty classrooms where books still lie open on desks, peer into decaying amusement parks that never opened, and stand before the sarcophagus of the reactor.
Yet, dark tourism is not confined to the past. In the heart of New York City, Ground Zero draws millions of visitors each year. Where the Twin Towers once stood, now lie two massive reflecting pools, each bordered by the names of those who perished on September 11, 2001. The memorial breathes with the stories of firefighters, office workers, airline passengers, and ordinary people. You walk through dark halls filled with recordings of final phone calls, charred elevator motors, and testimonies from survivors and rescuers.
dIn Cambodia, just outside Phnom Penh, the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek appear almost peaceful at first glance—birds chirp, trees sway in the breeze—until you notice the skulls. They fill the stupa that rises at the centre of the site. Here, during the reign of the Khmer Rouge, thousands were executed in mass graves. Many visitors listen to audio guides that include survivor accounts. Some cry. Others simply sit on benches, unable to process what they’ve just witnessed.
Dark tourism is not without controversy though. Critics argue that turning tragedy into an attraction risks trivialising the suffering. In some cases, they may be right. There have been selfies taken in gas chambers, and staged photoshoots at nuclear ruins. It’s a fine line between remembrance and voyeurism.
The number of dark-themed sites is growing fast. “It’s partly because more people are travelling than ever before. As tourist numbers grow, so too does the development of new attractions to meet that demand,” says Dr Duncan Light, a principal academic at Bournemouth University. The numbers tell the story. In 2024, New York’s 9/11 Memorial and Museum drew 14 million visitors. Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial welcomed 2.2 million, including nearly three-quarters of a million international visitors. Auschwitz saw 1.83 million pass under its gate. On a single day, 36,000 people wandered the volcanic ghosts of Pompeii in Italy.
According to Coherent Market Insights, the dark tourism industry is projected to be worth USD 32.76 billion by 2025, and almost USD 40 billion by 2032. Countries like the US, Canada, Germany, France, the UK, India, Sri Lanka, Argentina, and Brazil are driving the boom. Some, like Pompeii and Hiroshima, are historical mile-markers. Others are heartbreakingly recent. In Israel, the site of the 2023 Nova music festival, where a Hamas attack left hundreds dead, is now a makeshift memorial.
Dark tourism isn’t always about war. In Japan, trekkers move quietly through Aokigahara, the eerie forest at the foot of Mount Fuji known for suicides. In the UK, the village of Eyam recalls an act of self-sacrifice: villagers quarantined themselves during the plague, sealing their own fate to protect others. In Dallas, US, visitors peer from the very window that changed American history: JFK’s assassination. At Jallianwala Bagh, bullet holes from the 1919 massacre have been preserved. Amritsar’s Partition Museum, the Cellular Jail in the Andamans, and the battlefields of Panipat all bear the imprint of violence and resistance. In Varanasi, tourists gather not to mourn but to witness ritual: fire-lit funeral pyres along the Ganges. “Tours like ‘Death & Rebirth’ in Varanasi or the ‘Tantrik Temples’ attract foreign travellers,” says Dr Nitasha Sharma, a lecturer at the University of Alabama, who specialises in the perception of dark tourism. Elsewhere, in Delhi, the rise of ‘Djinn walks’ has captured the imagination of local youth.
If tragedy once demanded reverence, today it must also compete with the camera lens. “Smartphones and platforms like Instagram and TikTok have transformed how people engage with dark heritage,” says Craig Wight, associate professor at Edinburgh Napier University and a dark tourism expert. In Berlin, grinning tourists pose between the concrete slabs of the Holocaust Memorial. At Auschwitz, players once hunted virtual monsters via Pokémon Go. On TikTok, videos tagged #disastertourism rack up thousands of likes. Now, people don’t just visit a place—they post it. Tag it. Filter it. The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, for instance, offers a VR tour of the Secret Annex, allowing viewers around the world to step into the cramped space where Anne and seven others hid during WWII.
In response to these ethical crosscurrents, many dark tourism sites have consciously evolved. The focus is shifting: not just to show tragedy, but to teach through it. For instance, India’s Smritivan Earthquake Memorial in Bhuj honours the almost 13,000 lives lost in the 2001 Gujarat quake through immersive exhibits that encourage reflection. A guided tour of Robben Island invites visitors to walk in the footsteps of those who helped liberate South Africa. Argentina’s former ESMA detention centre—once a clandestine torture site under the military dictatorship—has been transformed into a space for justice and memory, with survivor testimonies at its core.
Global bodies are taking note. In 2023, four genocide memorials in Rwanda were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, and in 2024, UNESCO announced new partnerships to deepen their educational role. “We must tirelessly transmit the history of the genocide, out of duty to the victims and to ensure that such atrocities never happen again,” said UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay.
In Bhopal, where toxic gas leaked from the Union Carbide plant in 1984, locals resent the rise of tourists visiting the site. “For survivors, the site is a living wound, and the fact that many visitors are American only deepens the sense of exploitation,” says Dr Sharma. Across the world, similar tensions play out. In North Korea, only state-curated stories are permitted. In Seodaemun Prison in South Korea, critics argue that theatrical displays—mannequins mid-torture, actors in costume—risk turning trauma into theatre.
Governments and tourism boards are often caught in a delicate dance of inviting visitors in while trying not to commodify the past. In Uganda, for instance, there’s growing interest in using the country’s turbulent history to draw tourists after sites tied to conflict were featured in films like The Last King of Scotland, Kony 2012, and 27 Guns. “Our dark past offers powerful stories that resonate globally,” said former UTB CEO Lilly Ajarova. The biggest ethical risk is turning trauma into a spectacle. “Governments are far more comfortable promoting ghost stories or legends than real, recent, or politically charged tragedies,” says Dr Beth Wielde Heidelberg, a scholar at the Urban and Regional Studies Institute at Minnesota State University, who specialises in dark tourism and its impact on local government policy and communities.
Narratives must centre the voices of victims and survivors, not just what tourists want to hear. Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum uses personal artefacts and survivor accounts to humanise the horror. South Africa’s Apartheid Museum worked closely with historians, curators, and communities affected by apartheid, creating a space that’s principled and powerful. Also, if revenue is generated, destinations should be transparent about where it goes, ideally toward education, preservation, or community benefit.
The trend is not done evolving yet. If anything, its reach is only expanding, geographically, emotionally, and ethically. In 2024, the government of Guyana proposed a bold, controversial move: to develop Jonestown, the remote jungle outpost where over 900 people died in a mass suicide-murder led by cult figure Jim Jones, into an official dark tourism site. “It certainly has my support,” said tourism minister Oneidge Walrond at the time.
London has already unveiled multiple Covid-19 memorials. New York is planning its own. Even nature’s fury is becoming part of the map. After the 2024 landslides in Kerala’s Wayanad district, curious visitors began arriving as soon as roads reopened. Some were there to offer help, some to grieve, but others came just to see. When the region slowly reopened, locals weren’t sure what visitors were after, peace or a peek at destruction. “It’s hard to tell if it’s dark tourism or genuine interest,” says V Kumar, a homestay owner in the area.
Some tragedies are etched so deeply into our collective memory, they continue to draw people in. That’s the paradox at the heart of dark tourism: people seek meaning in the ruins. They stare at what they fear to feel. And while the motivations vary, the impulse remains deeply human. That’s why some scholars argue that the term itself—dark tourism—may no longer fit. Alternatives like ‘remembrance tourism’ or ‘dark heritage’ are gaining traction.
In the end, the goal is not to soften the tragedy. It’s to shape something meaningful from the ashes. To tell the stories that still hurt. And in turn, remember what could be forgotten.