The bunkers of Albania

Even more curious for visitors are the infamous domed concrete military bunkers – some 750,000 of them built across the country by the dictatorship – paranoid about invasion by the likes of Greece and then-Yugoslavia. Usually quite small in size, most are still around – some abandoned, others repurposed into things like food stands, storage areas, and animal pens (one beach hotel, the Elesio in the town of Golem, even made theirs part of their spa!). Here in Tirana you can see one at the Postbllok-Checkpoint (above), a downtown installation meant to remind today´s generation of the bad old days and serve as a memorial to those who suffered under the dictatorship; in addition, a particularly enormous and elaborate pair of them – created for Hoxha and his cronies – have been turned into history/art museums called Bunk’Art; the one in the city centre goes down five storeys and boasts around a hundred rooms.

Read more in our post Fascinating Tirana, Albania, and its Renaissance.


Sergio delle Vedove

 

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