Bunk Art 1, Tirana

The experience from just before arrival to the entrance was very cool. Starting from having to drive down a very long tunnel to get to the ticketing booth. And then a 200m walk to the entrance. 

The tunnel was built in September 1972 and was inaugurated in June 25th 1978. 

The whole surface of the bunker is 2685 square metres allocated into 5 levels with 106 offices and an assembly/cinema hall. 

This structure was built for military purposes to guarantee the normal function of the political and military commanding line in time of crisis insuring all conditions to shelter all the political and military leadership of the country .

This is the only structure with an Assembly Hall where the Albanian parliament would gather in case of war . The Albanian military leadership came with this idea after visiting 1964 in North Korea. Where it's a tradition to make tunnels appropriate for parliament meeting .

After the break up with former soviet union , Albanian political and military general guidelines with the country's fortification. The target was to build a fortified system with highest resistance against conventional and nuclear weapons to ensure the safety of vivid force and military technique from enemy fire, to recuperate time lost and also to prepare with fastest pace .

207,000 bunkers with planned in all Albania but 168,000 were built.

One of the 1st rooms were Enver Hoxha office and living quarters. It came with a room for his secretary, a living room, bedroom and a bathroom. 

The bathroom even had a portable water heating device using a kerosene tube.  

This apparently is a mobile system for oxygen production.

It is seen across the rest of the bunkers in close intervals, in case of close permanence in the closed bunker. Inside the container was 5 tabs that contained a chemical substance that when in contact with air releases oxygen. The words are in Chinese because it was produced in China. 

A lot of very old telecommunication devices which I had never seen before. 

Leading to the living quarters of Mehmet Shehu, the then Prime Minister of that time. 

Spent over 1.5hours covering all 5 levels, and I think they did an excellent job with this museum.

Not only did it show the different offices of the key position holders, it also covered information on the military set-up, historical information across different periods and lesser known stories of war heroes as well as what a Socialist home may look like and their living conditions. And I greatly appreciated that everything was well translated into English!

There's also a Bunker Museum (Bunk Art 2) in Tirana city, but that is a lot smaller (from what I gathered online), and would highly recommend visiting Bunk Art 1.