Last year, a window used in the Louvre heist became an unlikely tourist attraction after four thieves broke through it to enter the Paris museum in a dramatic robbery. The raid saw the gang make off with £76 million worth of Napoleonic jewellery. This led to people flocking to take snaps of the smashed opening, with the feature joining the likes of the famous Mona Lisa painting as a draw at the famous French attraction. But it's not the only "must-see" crime scene. Here we look at other macabre sites that have become popular with tourists desperate to get a glimpse.
Gangster Pub
The Krays were notorious East End gangsters. A chill is likely to go down your spine if you pop in for a pint at the Blind Beggar in Whitechapel, East London. It hasn't changed much since March 9, 1966, when Ronnie Kray, one half of notorious gangsters The Kray Twins, shot dead George Cornell as he sat on a stool in the saloon bar. Cornell was a member of a rival gang, The Richardsons. Kray pulled out a 9mm Luger to shoot him in the head as The Walker Brothers hit "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" played on the jukebox. He and his brother Reggie would eventually end up behind bars for murder. Today the boozer is the venue for tours about the Krays.
House of Horror
The address 25 Cromwell Street in Gloucester went down in infamy as the place where serial killers Fred and Rosemary West carried out their horrific murders and buried some of their 12 victims. The house was demolished in 1996, two years after their arrest. But the alleyway and path which replaced it is reckoned to be visited by thousands of so-called "dark tourists" each year. One visitor, Adrian Mitchell, said the attraction was "just the curiosity of coming here, seeing where everything took place, the fact this was a normal street and these were horrific crimes committed by somebody who is well known in area, was just fascinating to me."
Ripper's Haunt
Each night, at the height of the tourist season, hundreds of people set off on tours of East London, visiting the spots where the still unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper murdered at least five women in 1888. Among the places these excursions take in is Mitre Square, where the mutilated body of fourth victim Catherine Eddowes was found, as well as the Ten Bells pub in Spitalfields, where two victims, Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly, were known to have drunk before their deaths. The watering hole was once ghoulishly called The Jack The Ripper after the shadowy culprit.
Murder Mansion
"Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one." So goes the dark rhyme about the gruesome axe murders of Lizzie Borden's father and stepmother in 1892 at their home in Fall River, Massachusetts. The 32-year-old teacher was the only credible suspect, but a lack of evidence saw her sensationally acquitted of the killings. The strange case went down in American folklore and today the house where the murders were committed is both a museum and a B&B; you can even book to stay in a room where one of the slayings took place.
Assassin's Lair
President John F. Kennedy was shot dead as he travelled through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, in an open-top limo on November 22, 1963. According to the official account, the killer was Lee Harvey Oswald, who gunned down the 46-year-old with a rifle from a window of the nearby School Book Depository building. Today it is known as The Sixth Floor Museum, named after the level of the building from where Oswald fired. It features exhibits about the hit and the conspiracy theories surrounding it, as well as the faithfully recreated sniper's perch itself.
Heist HQ
In the early hours of August 1963, a gang of thieves held up a Royal Mail railway service travelling from Glasgow to London as it passed through rural Buckinghamshire. After they beat locomotive driver Jack Mills over the head, the villains stormed a cash-carrying carriage, plundering £2.61 million, worth over £60 million in today's money. The Great Train Robbery would become Britain's most notorious heist. But the planning for the crime was done at the Star Tavern, in London's Belgravia. It was here, in the upstairs bar, that the mastermind, Bruce Reynolds, met with fellow robbers Ronnie Biggs and Edwards to hatch the scheme. They would, however, later be jailed. The pub now attracts visitors keen to see the notorious venue and hosts talks by former detectives about the robbery.
