Hitler's bunker is now just a parking lot. But it's a 'dark tourism' attraction anyway

toggle caption Greg Rosalsky/NPR

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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.

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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.

"If you don't know why people are standing in groups in a place where there is nothing to see — this is the Führerbunker," writes one tourist on TripAdvisor, a travel website. He rates the destination two out of five stars.

"I was very unhappy with this place," writes a tourist from Canada. One star.

"I wouldn't go out of your way to visit here," writes another tourist. "However, it is another thing to be 'ticked off the list.'"

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Scholars have come to call tourism to places like the Führerbunker "dark tourism," which refers to sightseeing of destinations known for death, disaster, horror, or misery.