Watching the Detectives

This place has a lot of exhibits about the testing and use of chemical weapons in Albania - and the spying on people. They have a regular family living room set up with a spy area right next, showing how everything was bugged.

 

Friendly Neighborhood Snitch

Bunk'Art 1 is a history of the 20th century internal security apparatus of Albania. Various rooms have the early history. Lots of narrow corridors and bits of old electric spy devices dot the place. Then you get to the uniformed mannequin with the gas mask and you realize this really was a place. A scary place where they spied on everyone under Hoxha.

 

Bunk'Art 2

The little pillbox in the middle of Tirana is the entrance to an underground bunker built for bigwigs of the Hoxha regime. You go down some steps and get to the psychedelic entrance.

More Bunkers

Exterior of Bunk'Art 1 again and ... bunkers in their unkempt state in a national forest just outside Tirana. These little bunkers dot the Albanian countryside everywhere.

 

There Is Art

Despite being billed as an art museum, Bunk'Art 1 has very little art. It's mainly a history museum and needs to keep that purpose. One piece we saw installed in a stairwell is this. 

 

Forced Meetings - Bunk'Art 1

Every bunker needs a place for party speeches, right? This bunker also includes a tiny food store and the latest in 1960's communist entertainment.

 

Bunker Living

I would not want to have lived in this place. It's so drab and just plain miserable. But, I guess, if you're trying to avoid a chemical or nuclear strike, it's the place to be.

 

Antiquated Equipment - Bunk'Art 1

When this place was built in the late 1970's and early 1980's, the equipment was already obsolete. It was of Chinese manufacture with technology gotten from the Russians that was possibly stolen from the Americans. A lot of it looks WWII vintage.