COVID-19 has played out in Romania in a similar way to that in many other European countries. The government implemented decisive early measures which were able to keep the infection and mortality rates relatively low. This paper considers three distinctive aspects of the situation in Romania. First, the situation was complicated by the influence of transnational migrant workers, large numbers of whom returned to Romania when the pandemic started, accounting for distinct geographical variations in the rates of infection. At the same time, large numbers were able to leave the country at the height of the pandemic because they were “needed” for low-paid agricultural/social care work in western European countries. Second, the pandemic placed tension on Romania’s relationship with the EU, whilst highlighting a number of existing issues between Romania and its neighbors. Third, Romania’s strict lockdown measures exacerbated long-standing internal tensions, particularly with regard to the large and marginalized Roma community. The paper concludes by considering some of the possible longer-term implications for Romania of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This paper explores motives for visiting a lightest dark (heritage) tourism attraction. Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with 24 visitors to the London Dungeon. Few visitors reported an interest in death, suffering or the macabre as important in their decision to visit, a finding which accords with research at a range of other types of darker places. Instead, most people visited from general or incidental reasons that were unrelated to the attraction’s theme. However, while few visitors stated that an interest in learning was important in their reason for visiting, many reported that an element of informal education and discovery was an important part of the visit experience. As such, lighter dark tourism is about more than entertainment and the London Dungeon offers opportunities for visitors to engage with the themes and stories in a deeper way. Overall, these findings suggest that lightest dark tourism has more in common with heritage tourism than at first appears.

This special edition examines various aspects of urban tourism in the post-communist cities of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It begins by examining the nature of tourism restructuring in the region since the end of communism and the way that this unfolds in cities. It then examines major global changes in the nature of tourism and their impacts on urban tourism in CEE. These include the growing demand among tourists for new experiences and destinations; the impact of budget airlines on tourism in smaller cities; the impacts of the sharing economy (particularly Airbnb); and the growing emphasis on events and festivals as a means of attracting visitors to cities. The article ends by introducing the six articles that make up this special edition.

Memorial museums are frequently established within transitional justice projects intended to reckon with recent political violence. They play an important role in enabling young people to understand and remember a period of human rights abuses of which they have no direct experience. This paper examines the impact of a memorial museum in Romania which interprets the human rights abuses of the communist period (1947–1989). It uses focus groups with 61 young adults and compares the responses of visitors and non-visitors to assess the impact of the museum on views about the communist past, as well as the role of the museum within post-communist transitional justice. The museum had a limited impact on changing overall perceptions of the communist era but visiting did stimulate reflection on the differences between past and present, and the importance of long-term remembrance; however, these young people were largely skeptical about the museum’s role within broader processes of transitional justice. The paper concludes that it is important to recognize the limits of what memorial museums can achieve, since young people form a range of intergenerational memories about the recent past which a museum is not always able to change.

Many states in post-communist East-Central Europe have established memorial museums which aim to tell the story of suffering under the communist regime. They also seek to encourage visitors to develop empathy for the victims of communist repression. This paper explores the responses of a group of young people to a memorial museum in Romania (Sighet Memorial Museum), focusing on how these visitors experienced empathy for the victims of communist-era violence. Data were collected using focus groups. Most participants showed a degree of empathy for the victims of suffering but this was usually shallow in nature. However some visitors displayed more “active” empathy (characterized by deeper imaginative and cognitive engagement). The paper explores how both the design and environment of the museum and the background experiences of visitors influenced the development of empathy. It argues that empathy is not an automatic response to suffering and instead can be considered as an interaction between the design of the museum and the background knowledge of visitors. The paper argues that empathy is an important means for young people to participate in remembering the communist period, and is a means to make “prosthetic” memories of an authoritarian past which they have not experienced first-hand.