Abstract
The interest of tourists in death, disaster and atrocity is undeniable (Lennon and Foley, 2000). Dark sites are fashionable: tourists rush to visit Père Lachaise, San Vicente, or Highgate cemeteries (The Guardian, 2005), in-flight magazines talk of the "joy of prison museums" (Strange and Kempa, 2003), the Lonely Planet tipped the two post-conflict destinations, Belfast and Beirut, as "must-see" cities in 2007 (The Guardian, 2006). The list of such examples would be endless. This interest in death, disaster and atrocity is an area that has not been researched until recently; as a consequence, the terminology used differs according to the authors. Seaton (1996) called it "thanatourism", which is explained as "travel to a location wholly, or partially, motivated by the desire for actual or symbolic encounters with death, particularly, but not exclusively, violent death". Seaton also divides "thanatourism" in the five categories of activities. In this document, we find answers to questions like: To what extent should collections or heritage sites deal with those aspects of the past which the society is less happy to remember? What issues need to be taken into consideration when presenting the heritage of inhumanity trough objects or sites?
