Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

TOURISM

Dark tourism: Visit Italy’s creepiest attractions

While Italy might be famed for its art, history and food, it is also home to some of the creepiest tourist attractions on Earth, meaning you can celebrate this Halloween by visiting Mussolini's bunker or marvelling at a severed finger.

Published: 28 October 2016 13:39 CEST
Updated: 28 October 2018 13:43 CET
Dark tourism: Visit Italy's creepiest attractions
Mussolini's air raid shelter. Photo: Giulio Napolitano / AFP

Dark tourism is not a new phenomenon.

Medieval pilgrims walked countless miles to visit the tombs of saints and grizzly relics to get their kicks.

During the Enlightenment things weren't much better: upper class travellers eagerly paid their cash to witness public executions in Europe's grandest squares.

Even today, while we may spend summers innocently building sandcastles on the beach, at heart we're still a very morbid bunch, and Italy is home to some fantastically spooky places.

Here's our run-down of the very creepiest. Read on if you dare…

The Colosseum – Rome

The Colosseum. Photo: Filippo Monteforte / AFP

An obvious one, yes but impressive architecture aside, the Colosseum really is just a massive theatre of death.

It was once regularly home to 65,000 baying Romans, who cheered an estimated 400,000 people and 1,000,000 animals to their deaths. Think about that the next time you line up for a selfie in front of its famous facade.

The former psychiatric hospital of Volterra

The flaking facade of the hospital. Photo: Arianna Flacco

What could possibly be more eery than an abandoned mental asylum?

The ruins at Volterra have been slowly crumbling since 1978 when the hospital was finally closed after years of mistreating its patients .

As if that wasn't creepy enough, one room contains the runic etchings of a patient who was called Oreste Ferdinando Nannetti. Nobody knows what the etchings mean – but they are perhaps a chilling expression of his insanity.

San Cataldo Cemetery – Modena

The San Cataldo cemetary by Maria Lucia Lucetti / Paolo Tedeschi

This hideous monstrosity was built as a high rise cemetery destined to become the eternal resting place of the towns inhabitants. The building was designed by noted architect Aldo Rossi and built between 1972 and 1976.

However, plans changed and the cemetery was never used. Now the cemetery stands, alone and empty with identical rows of empty tombs just waiting to be filled…

Galileo's middle finger – Florence

A rude gesture? Galileo's middle finger.

We don't know why the Florence Museum of Science considers the rotten, severed appendage of the renaissance scientist a suitable tourist attraction.

We do know that the digit was removed from Galileo's body 95 years after his death by Anton Francesco Gori, who must have had a strong stomach.

The finger is kept in a container made from gold and glass, much like a religious relic — ironic given that he was condemned for heresy by the church for his views which have since spawned centuries of scientific thought.

He is still giving the finger to the church today.

Museum for the memory of Ustica – Bologna

What remains of Itavia flight 870. Photo: Ghedolo

The Ustica air disaster of 1980 is one of the most controversial tragedies in modern Italian history. The only certain fact is that on June 27th, at 8.59pm Itavia flight 870 plunged into the sea 150 miles off the coast of Sicily killing all 81 people on board.

The flight had been on its way to Palermo from Bologna – but the question as to what brought the jet down has been the subject of fierce debate ever since.

In 2007, much of the salvaged fuselage was installed in a grim art project-cum-memorial. The room also holds personal belongings of the victims that were recovered from the sea. As if that wasn't creepy enough, loudspeakers blast out the “worries” of the passengers who lost their lives as you survey the wreckage. Chilling.

Mussolini's Villa Torlonia Bunker – Rome

Ghostly: Mussolini's air raid shelter. Photo: Giulio Napolitano / AFP

When you're finished gawking at Rome's other grizzly and blood-soaked Roman sites – why not check out Mussolini's Bunker? The bunker lies beneath Villa Torlonia and is where Il Duce used to hide from allied bombs with his family.

The bunker looks a lot like you would expect, but the morbid fascination lies in entering the personal space of a man whose philosophies are largely responsible for one of the darkest moments in human history.

The Capuchin catacombs – Palermo

The Capuchin catacombs. Photo: Eugenio Interguglielmi

Not one for the faint-hearted. The labyrinthine catacombs under Palermo contain 1,250 bodies. The bodies are in various stages of decomposition and were interred from late sixteenth to the early twentieth century.

The corpses are organized into categories, and all the people interred here were buried in their best clothes. Highlights include the body of a well-known 'Don Giovanni' who is hung up on the wall with his eyes still open so he can look at all the women who pass. Spine-tingling stuff. 

Read also: How to celebrate Halloween in Italy

Member comments

Log in here to leave a comment.
Become a Member to leave a comment.
For members

TRAVEL NEWS

Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Almost 800,000 fewer UK holidaymakers have visited Spain in 2023 when compared to 2019. What’s behind this big drop?

Published: 23 August 2023 11:36 CEST
Updated: 26 August 2023 18:32 CEST
Why are fewer British tourists visiting Spain this year?

Spain welcomed 12.2 million UK tourists between January and July 2023, 6 percent less when compared to the same period in 2019, according to data released on Monday by Spanish tourism association Turespaña.

This represents a decrease of 793,260 British holidaymakers for Spain so far this year.

Conversely, the number of Italian (+8 percent), Irish (+15.3 percent), Portuguese (+24.8 percent), Dutch (+4 percent) and French tourists (+5 percent) visiting España in 2023 are all above the rates in 2019, the last pre-pandemic year. 

German holidaymakers are together with their British counterparts the two main nationalities showing less interest in coming to Spanish shores.

Britons still represent the biggest tourist group that comes to Spain, but it’s undergoing a slump, with another recent study by Caixabank Research suggesting numbers fell particularly in June 2023 (-12.5 percent of the usual rate). 

READ ALSO: Spain fully booked for summer despite most expensive holiday prices ever

So are some Britons falling out of love with Spain? Are there clear reasons why a holiday on the Spanish coast is on fewer British holiday itineraries?

According to Caixabank Research’s report, the main reasons are “the poor macroeconomic performance of the United Kingdom, the sharp rise in rates and the weakness of the pound”.

This is evidenced in the results of a survey by British market research company Savanta, which found that one in six Britons are not going on a summer holiday this year due to the UK’s cost-of-living crisis.

Practically everything, everywhere has become more expensive, and that includes holidays in Spain: hotel stays are up 44 percent, eating out is 13 percent pricier, and flights are 40 percent more on average. 

READ ALSO: How much more expensive is it to holiday in Spain this summer?

Caixabank stressed that another reason for the drop in British holidaymakers heading to Spain is that those who can afford a holiday abroad are choosing “more competitive markets” such as Turkey, Greece and Portugal. 

And there’s no doubt that the insufferably hot summer that Spain is having, with four heatwaves so far, has also dissuaded many holidaymakers from Blighty from overcooking in the Spanish sun. 

With headlines such as “This area of Spain could become too hot for tourists” or “tourists say it’s too hot to see any sights” featuring in the UK press, budding British holidaymakers are all too aware of the suffocating weather conditions Spain and other Mediterranean countries are enduring. 

Other UK outlets have urged travellers to try out the cooler Spanish north rather than the usual piping hot Costa Blanca and Costa del Sol destinations.

Another UK poll by InsureandGo found that 71 percent of the 2,000+ British respondents thought that parts of Europe such as Spain, Greece and Turkey will be too hot to visit over summer by 2027.

There’s further concern that the introduction in 2024 of the new (and delayed) ETIAS visa for non-EU visitors, which of course now also applies to UK nationals, could further compel British tourists to choose countries to holiday in rather than Spain.

READ MORE: Will British tourists need to pay for a visa waiver to enter Spain?

However, a drop in the number of British holidaymakers may not be all that bad for Spain, even though they did spend over €17 billion on their Spanish vacations in 2022. 

Towns, cities and islands across the country have been grappling with the problem of overtourism and the consequences it has on everything from quality of life for locals to rent prices. 

READ ALSO: ‘Beach closed’ – Fake signs put up in Spain’s Mallorca to dissuade tourists

The overcrowded nature of Spain’s beaches and most beautiful holiday hotspots appears to be one of the reasons why Germans are visiting Spain in far fewer numbers. A recent report in the country’s most read magazine Stern asked “if the dream is over” in their beloved Mallorca.

Spanish authorities are also seeking to overhaul the cheaper holiday package-driven model that dominates many resorts, which includes moving away from the boozy antics of young British and other European revellers.

Fewer tourists who spend more are what Spain is theoretically now looking for, and the rise in American, Japanese and European tourists other than Brits signify less of a dependence on the British market, one which tends to maintain the country’s tourism status quo for better or for worse.

SHOW COMMENTS