Tito nuclear bunker turns into art gallery
It was built to withstand nuclear war, a secret bunker to shelter Communist Yugoslavia’s strongman and his inside circle. Decades later, the massive underground complex is about to be reborn as one of the world’s quirkiest art galleries.
A Kalashnikov-toting soldier still guards the entrance of Josip Broz Tito’s subterranean fortress — a fitting if anachronistic symbol of the secrecy that once surrounded the structure. Outside of Marshal Tito and his closest confidants, its existence was known only to four generals and the handful of soldiers guarding it on completion in 1979 until Bosnia broke away from Yugoslavia in 1992 and its new Army took over.
Once the gallery opens a year from now, the soldier will be gone. The brainchild of a group of Sarajevo artists, it is to stage a Biennale of Contemporary Art starting in 2011 — with the Council of Europe providing much of the funding.
Despite its more peaceful purpose, the bunker still won’t be easy to access. The entrance lies behind a nondescript garage door of a remote house at the end of a lonely road east of the town of Konjic, 40 km south of Sarajevo. Once inside, a corridor takes the visitor to a 280-metre-deep U-shaped complex dug into the mountain behind the house. Bigger doors to the left along the main corridor hide the utility rooms, a fresh water basin, a generator room with two 25-tonne fuel tanks and the air-conditioning system that keeps the temperature at a comfortable 21ºC at all times.
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