Like so much of Albania, Gjirokastra’s Communist past is not far from the surface, this time in the form of secret tunnels under the castle, built in case of nuclear war to protect the regional and local government officials, and to allow business as usual to carry on.
One has to visit the tunnels with a guide who takes you up some stairs behind the Town Hall and through an unprepossessing gate in the mountainside. A series of doors follow, the first of which is concrete (the rest are hardly kickable-down either):
Rooms for 200 officials were built, with separate corridors for regional and local government. A ventilation system was installed to ensure that fresh air was available throughout:
Although the tunnels were secret, they were known about by the villagers, and as soon as the Communist era was over, they were broken into and everything taken away. They had never been used. Interesting fact in case you didn’t know – 80 per cent of Albania’s budget was spent on defence, leaving people starving while approximately 173,000 bunkers were built.
Spending all their money on ‘defence’ and leaving people starving? Sounds familiar…
Indeed! Too bloody familiar!
Yes, not much change there, then…
See above!
Very pleased to see the emergence of bunkers finally! Though actually we didn’t see the ones in Gjirokaster as we only visited on a day trip – visited the wonderful ethnographic museum instead.
Well, we’ve been trying to take pictures of bunkers ( as you know, they’re everywhere) but always seem to be driving when we spot them. Sadly, the Ethnographic Museum was closed for renovation…
Eerie and sinister and very evocative. Intrigued by the abandoned book on Stalin with the dates 1991-93 by which time the Cold War was over, surely.
The place was stripped when the Communist era finally ended so my guess is some appropriate ‘ props’ have been added to cheer things up a bit. Well, maybe not cheer them up precisely..