Heritage Travel Etiquette

Some places on a travel itinerary are where atrocities happened. Slave forts on the West African coast, memorials to genocide, camps, massacre sites, museums built around a wound that has not closed. They are open to visitors because the people who keep them want the history known. That is an invitation to witness, and it comes with an expectation about how you behave inside it.

What You Need to Know

Why these sites are open

Almost every site of this kind is preserved deliberately, by people who decided that the history should be visible rather than buried. Visiting is not intrusion; it is the thing the site exists for. What is asked in return is attention, and the recognition that the events are not distant to everyone present.

Prepare before you go

Read enough beforehand that you arrive with the outline in place and can spend the visit on the site rather than on the facts. Read at least one source written by people from the place or the descendant community, whose framing will differ from the standard summary in ways that matter.

Inside

Quiet. Follow the route the site sets and the guide’s pace. Do not eat, do not take a call, do not treat a chamber as a place to catch up with someone. Where a guide is a descendant of the people the site commemorates, which at many sites they are, they are telling you their own family history in a working day, and the ordinary courtesy owed to that is considerable.

Photography

Check the site’s rule and follow it exactly. Where photography is permitted, photograph the place and not yourself in it. There is no version of a smiling portrait at a site of mass death that reads as anything other than what it is, and the same is true of a photograph composed for the way it will look shared. If in doubt, do not raise the camera, and remember that many sites prohibit it in particular chambers for reasons they will explain if asked.

Afterward

Leave room in the day. People commonly find the effect delayed and larger than expected, and a schedule that moves straight from a slave fort to a lunch reservation serves nobody. Build in an hour, and for a group build in the possibility that someone will need considerably more than an hour.

What to Do Before Your Trip

• Read the history, including a source from the descendant community.
• Check the site’s own rules on photography, dress and conduct.
• Book a guide from the site rather than narrating it yourself.
• Leave the afternoon light in the itinerary.
• Tell your group what to expect, before the day.

Important Considerations

For many travelers these visits are personal. On the West African coast in particular, visitors from the African diaspora are often visiting a site connected to their own ancestry, and the experience is not the same as a historical tour. Groups are frequently mixed in this respect, and a leader who has thought about that in advance will handle the day considerably better than one who has not. Give people room to react differently, and do not require anyone to explain their reaction.

Let the site frame its own history. Sites of memory are usually curated by people with a specific and considered account, and a visitor who arrives to correct it, or to draw a quick comparison with somewhere else, is making the visit about themselves. Questions are welcome; conclusions delivered aloud in a memorial chamber are not.

Be careful with what you post. A reflective account of what a place made you think is one thing; a photograph of yourself framed for engagement is another, and the difference is obvious to the people who keep the site.

Tips for Group Travelers

• Brief before arrival, not in the car park.
• State the photography rule explicitly and enforce it.
• Use the site’s own guides.
• Allow silence afterward, and do not fill it.
• Make it acceptable to step outside. Say so beforehand.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Posing for photographs.
• Arriving without knowing what happened there.
• Talking over the guide.
• Scheduling something light immediately afterward.
• Treating a site of grief as one more stop.

Frequently Asked Questions

How should I behave at a memorial or a site of atrocity?

As you would at a funeral you had been invited to attend. Quiet, unhurried, following the site’s route and its guides, no eating, no calls, no posing. That single comparison answers nearly every specific question that arises.

Is it acceptable to take photographs?

Where the site permits it, photograph the place rather than yourself in it. Many sites prohibit photography in particular chambers and will explain why if you ask. A portrait of yourself smiling at a site of mass death reads as exactly what it is, regardless of intention.

Should children visit these sites?

Many sites publish an age guidance and some have a route or a version designed for younger visitors, so start with what the site itself says. Beyond that it is a judgment for the family, made better by preparing the child beforehand rather than by explaining inside.

What if I find it overwhelming?

That is a common and reasonable response, and every site of this kind is used to it. Stepping outside is entirely acceptable. For a group, saying so in advance makes it possible for someone to leave without feeling they have made a scene.

Related Travel Tips

• Culture, customs and responsible travel, the section this guide belongs to.
• Visiting Religious and Sacred Sites.
• Photography Etiquette.
• Traveling Respectfully.

Plan Your Trip With LABUSA Travel

Heritage travel is the work LABUSA Travel was built to do, and the difference a prepared itinerary makes is largest here: the right guides, enough time, and a day that does not ask people to move straight from a fort to a beach.

Talk with a LABUSA Travel advisor about a trip you are considering, or browse our destination guides for a specific country.

Verify Before You Travel

Site rules, opening hours and guidance for visitors are published by each site and are the authority for that place. Local conditions are published per destination by the U.S. Department of State and independently by the U.K. FCDO. The framing of heritage as defined by the communities that hold it comes from the UNESCO 2003 Convention.