ABSTRACT

Within the extensive range of cultural tourism phenomena, regarded as one of the oldest and most important generators of tourism (Richards 1996; McKercher and du Cros 2002), one can easily recognise certain subcategories, as were described by various academics (Bonink 1992; Munsters 2007). Within his typology of cultural historical resources Munsters identifies attractions that belong to the category of cultural tourism in a wider sense, such as monuments, churches and museums, but also includes certain theme parks and folkloristic festivals and events. A more precise category is reserved for attractions such as archaeological digs, castles and their period gardens, thematic museums and art festivals. With this typology he emphasises the representatives of the so-called ‘high culture’ and not those of the so-called ‘low culture’ (Munsters 2007). However, there are also some types of cultural tourism that seem less easy to categorise and that show distinguishing marks of both ‘high-brow culture’ and ‘low-brow culture’. Dark Tourism, defined by Stone as ‘the act of travel and visitation to sites, attractions and exhibitions which have real or recreated death, suffering or the seemingly macabre as the main theme’, might be regarded as one of those (Stone 2006: 146). Stone also suggested that there are different types of this dark tourism, ranging from a lighter version to the darkest appearance. The so-called dark fun factories like the dungeons that are found in some Western European cities belong to the first category, and the extermination camps of the Second World War, or a more recent location such as the ‘Killing Fields’ of Cambodia, belong to the other, darkest side of the spectrum (Stone 2006). Between these two extremes one can further discern other venues such as educational exhibitions, but also former prisons, cemeteries and battlefields that are often described as specific niches of tourism (Bristow and Newman 2005; Holguin 2005; Tarlow, in Novelli 2005; Hitchcott 2009; Turnell-Read 2009).