The term 'dark tourism' is far newer than the practice,which long predates Pompeii's emergence as a dark attraction.Dr.Philip Stone,perhaps the world's leading academic expert on dark tourism,considers the Roman Coliseum to be one of the first dark tourist sites,where people travelled long distances to watch death as sport.Later,until the late 18th century,the(1)
B
B
was crueler still in central London,where people paid money to sit in grandstands to watch mass hangings.Dealers would sell pies at the site,which was roughly where Marble Arch stands today. It was only in 1996 that 'dark tourism' entered the(2)
ABC
ABC
vocabulary when two academics in Glasgow applied it while looking at sites associated with the murder of John F.Kennedy.Those who study dark tourism identify plenty of reasons for the growing phenomenon,including(3)
BD
BD
awareness of it as an identifiable thing.(4)
A
A
to sites has also improved with the arrival of cheap air travel.It's hard to imagine that the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial and museum would now welcome more than two million visitors a year were it not for its nearness to Krakow's international airport.Peter Hohenhaus,a widely travelled dark tourist(5)
D
D
in Vienna,also points to the broader rise in off-the-beaten-track tourism,beyond the territory of popular guidebooks and TripAdvisor rankings. "A lot of people don't want(6)
BC
BC
tourism and that often means engaging with places that have a more recent history than,say,a Roman ruin," he says. "You go to Sarajevo (薩拉熱窩) and most people remember the war being in the news so it feels closer to one's own (7)
AB
AB
." Hohenhaus is also a fan of 'beauty in decay',the contemporary cultural movement in which urban (8)
CD
CD
have become subject matter for expensive coffee-table books and a thousand Instagram accounts.The crossover(糅合)with death is clear. "I've always been (9)
AC
AC
to ruined things," the 54-year-old says.But while,like any tourism,dark tourism at its best is educational,the example of Grenfell Tower(a London tower block,destroyed by a fire in 2017 with 71 deaths)hints at the unease felt at some sites. "I remember the Lonely Planet Bluelist book had a chapter about dark tourism a while ago and one of the rules was 'don't go back too early'," Hohenhaus says. "I'll be interested to see Grenfell Tower up close.I can see the (10)
C
C
.But I would not stand in the street taking a selfie merrily."