Interesting: What do you know about ‘dark tourism?’
Posted By RichC on September 9, 2025
Read an article on the NPR blog about “Dark Tourism.”
Dark Tourism has been defined as tourism involving travel to places historically associated with death and tragedy. (link)
It was a new term to me (but shouldn’t be) … and as someone who reads a significant number of books on World War II, should have probably known more about it? Check out Greg Rosalsky’s article titled “Hitler’s bunker is now just a parking lot. But it’s a ‘dark tourism’ attraction anyway” included below.
Tourists gather at a parking lot in the center of Berlin, Germany. Greg Rosalsky/NPR
BERLIN — On a Wednesday afternoon in late August, I traveled to a tourist attraction in the heart of Germany’s capital. If I had no context, it would have seemed like a really weird place for tourists to congregate. It’s a parking lot, surrounded by apartment buildings. On one side is Mimi Tea, a boba tea shop that has a cutesy cartoon bear on its storefront.
But the tourists don’t come here for boba tea. They come here because buried beneath this dull patch of pavement lies the remains of a dark place of historical significance. It was underground here that, 80 years ago, one of the world’s most infamous villains swallowed a cyanide capsule and fired a bullet into his brain. It was here that Adolf Hitler spent his last living moments.
The site is known in German as the Führerbunker, a subterranean bomb shelter that the Nazis built to protect their leader and his top henchmen from air raids during World War II. They built the bunker underneath the Reich Chancellery, a building complex that served as the Nazi government’s headquarters.
The Reich Chancellery is long gone. Aboveground, there is no visible evidence that this place was once important, except a blue information plaque with a drawing of Hitler’s bunker and a whole lot of text in tiny font.
I grabbed a boba tea and watched as swarms of tourists, sometimes led by tour guides, came to this site, squinted to read the plaque, and stared at a parking lot. Many tourists come here and get disappointed.
