Sites of famous battles, places where atrocities have occurred, and other such sobering locations have long attracted visitors in what is sometimes termed Dark Tourism, War Tourism, or Conflict Tourism. Often, former servicemen and women wish to revisit places where they fought for their country, lost comrades, and made lifelong friends. Some visit due to ancestral links to the area and what happened there, and others for historical interest, and such is the attraction of these places that they often become tourist sites, sometimes with museums and other exhibitions that detail what occurred in the past.
Those seeking sites in Europe significant to the First World War, for instance, may wish to visit excavated trenches in Northern France’s Thiepval Wood and Newfoundland Park, once Somme battlefields, or the Lochnagar crater, site of a massive explosion on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.
In Belgium, the likes of the Yorkshire Trench in Ypres, the notorious Hill 60, and Langemark and Tyne Cot cemeteries receive many visitors wishing to know more about the sacrifices that were made in the conflict.
Normandy in France is a popular destination for World War Two tourists, including many war veterans, who wish to visit sites such as Pegasus Bridge, which was liberated on D-Day, the German gun battery at Longues, or Omaha beach where troops landed.
Visitors to Germany may wish to visit Dachau, site of Hitler’s first concentration camp and learn more about the suffering that occurred there, as may visitors to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Treblinka extermination camps in Poland.
Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, where the famous diarist hid from occupying forces, is also open to the public as a museum, with the Secret Annex preserved in its original condition and Anne Frank’s original diary on display.
Visitors to Vietnam interested in sites significant to the Vietnam War often take a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels in the south of the country near Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon. The 121km complex of tunnels, part of a much larger network throughout the country, was used by Viet Cong forces during the conflict and has been preserved as part of a war memorial park.
Those visiting Hanoi in the north of Vietnam, meanwhile, may wish to visit Hoa Lo Prison, known to American prisoners of war held there (including American presidential candidate John McCain) as the Hanoi Hilton.
Since the calming of “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, many travellers to the region’s capital Belfast have taken to visiting sites relating to the city’s turbulent and violent sectarian past. The political murals of the Shankill Road, site of 1993’s Shankill bombing, and other areas of Belfast allow visitors a glimpse of the conflict between Unionists and Republicans whose battleground the city became.
