Bunkart 2 is the latest museum opened in Tirana on 17 November, in the framework of the National Day of Tirana Liberation. This top-secret nuclear bunker now is a new museum in the very center of Tirana, behind the Public Order Ministry, with aim to  show visitors how Communist-era police persecuted the regime’s opponents. The 1,000-square-meter (1,077-square-foot) bunker with reinforced concrete walls up to 2.4 meters (8-feet) thick was built between 1981 and 1986 to shelter elite police and interior ministry staff in the event of a nuclear attack. The museum holds photographs and equipment that illustrate the political persecution of some 100,000 Albanians from 1945 until 1991.

It has been one of several former hideouts the Albanian government has repurposed for the public since it came to power three years ago. Bunkart1 and Bunkart2 were part of hundreds bunkers built over the country as fortifications for Enver Hoxha dictatorial regime, since he has fear of imaginary invasion by the “imperialist United States and social-imperialist Soviet Union. At one time there were rumored to be as many as 700,000, but the government says 175,000 were built.

TAGS: BunkArt 2 in Tirana, Museums in Tirana, The Communism in Albania, Albanian Communism, Things to do in Tirana

Reference from: Visit Tirana