Thanatourism at Grodno Castle in Zagórze Śląskie

Abstract

The German concentration camp in Auschwitz, mass graves in Katyn Forest, Thailand after tsunami, war zones (e.g., in Palestine) or ground zeroes (e.g., Ground Zero in New York) -all of these places are tourist destinations. While they are associated with death and suffering, they also serve to commemorate and document catastrophic events. Travelling to such places is called thanatourism. The need to isolate this concept as a subcategory of broadly defined tourism arose at the end of the 20 th century, when a growing interest in this type of travel was first observed, even though the phenomenon is thought to date back to Christian pilgrimages and gladiator games in the Roman Empire [1], [2].But what drives people to travel to death sites? Firstly, it is worth pointing out that not all of these sites are perceived as connected to death by the visiting tourist, as the character of death spaces varies 1 . It is believed that "dark" sites are * ORCID: 0000-0001-5761-5362. Faculty of Chemistry, Wrocław