BBC: Bunk '%Art, Europe's most secret location

He was hiding from the street. A long tunnel, open through a hill opposite, was the only way in. This was not a place to walk was the entrance to a military base.

The tunnel, twice the size of a football field, is colder than the outside. Here and there are pools of water. A harmonious remand becomes more powerful as it approaches the center of the tunnel. Behind, the guard standing at the entrance of the tunnel seems to be a toy soldier.

In all, you must walk 198 feet [198 m] to an unknown parking lot at the end. An institutional gray building appears across the street. This is “Bunk'Art 1118x1> and a few minutes on the road behind lead to one of the most hidden places of the Cold War.

“This is the best place to stay in Tirana during summer days when the trimeter reaches 40 degrees Celsius”, says Artemis Muco.

Mucho works as a guide in “Bunk '%Art 1”. The 24-year-old graduate girl in history spends her days in a place so secret that she was known only as “Godina 0774”, a cold label for a structure that was built to survive the end of the world.

Enver Hoxha was Albania's leader for four decades. From the end of World War II until the mid-1980s, he led the country according to the Stalinist self-sufficient model designed to turn Albania into a modern and independent country. It was a unique route, its diligent application of Marxism-lenism allowed very little deviation. Albania broke relations with Yugoslavia in 1948, with the Soviet Union in 1961 and China in 1979 because of abandoning Socialist duties from these countries.

Along with this Stalinist zeal came the paranoid. Hoxha, a former partisan who had fought the Germans in World War II, believed that enemies from the East and West planned to conquer this small and mountainous country. He ordered the development of a giant bunker construction programme that would enable Albanian citizens to fight a guerrilla war through a wide network of bunkers. And as fighting took place, Hoxha, along with the rest of the leading elite, would coordinate resistance from this bunker.

“Godina 0774” is the result of Hoxha's unique paraning. Built between 1972 and 1978, it has more than 300 rooms scattered on seven underground levels, most of which lie deep within the low plain of Mount Date. It's a claustrophobic memory and without windows from the Cold War to one of the most closed corners.

If the West or East had invaded, “Rodine 0774” would have been an active place. The entire defense of the country would be organized from here. The building would expect up to 300 people, including the country's General Staff staff.

“There was enough food, water and fuel to stay closed for a year”, Mucho says.

The bunker was built under complete secrecy. On a wall is an image of Hodge visiting the day of inauguration, where she will spend one of the few nights left before her death in 1985. Despite this, he had his apartment, complete with a luxury bed, a secret office, and a bathroom equipped with an oil - engined shower. Private rooms are decorated with a material that looks like black wood.

“is compatible. While the rest of the rooms, like the prime minister's, are decorated with wood. This is the only room that's worked so”, Mucho says.

Albania moved from ruling with one party to parliamentary elections in 1991, but the rest of the decades were marked by chaos. In 1997, the country's government fell after the failure of the pyramid firms' scheme, which hit most of the country's wealth. About 2,000 people were killed and many military bases were raided because of chaos. “Godina 0774” was one of them.

The bunker complex was used for the last time by the Albanian Army for training in 1999, and was subsequently left behind. In 2014 alone, it was thanks to Italian journalist Carlo Bollino's attempts to bring back to light this relic of Albania's isolated history.

“I decided to open Bunkt 1 in 2014, when the culture ministry issued an announcement of ideas to celebrate Albania's 70th anniversary of independence”, he says of “BBC Futre”.

Until then, there was still no place where a tourist, not even an Albanian, could learn about the secrets of the communist era”, goes on.

He says the “had a powerful feeling during the first visit. I felt the thrill of exploring a dark, mysterious place that conveys a feeling of history”.

When the building opened in 2014 for a month, it caused a shock, some 7,000 Albanians visited it.

The Albanian learned that here is this bunker for which they knew nothing for many years. As you can see, there's a house around here. Even residents of the area were surprised when they arrived. It was very amazing for them to see that there was a building inside the mountain”, Muco says.

Boridino tried not to build just one museum that preserves the shelter of the regime as if it were a time capsule but to add something more. Many of the rooms have turned into art environments, each representing a different aspect of the communist past, or making the building empty.

The renovated rooms in the mazelike complex are filled with time - resistant products and equipment. The epic is now over that it renovated more than 100 of the bunker's rooms. Most of the complex has remained unnovated, or are simply out of date. A functional army base is nearby and officially this building remains part of the Ministry of Defence.

Boridino acknowledges that “this is a big challenge. This was difficult from a logistics point of view, because the country is very wet and any object exposed within days is included in mold”.

But the biggest challenge was cultural. Collecting documents and objects from the communist past was difficult, but even more difficult was trying to overcome prejudice over a country in which I wanted to tell a terrible period of the history of this people. I tried hard to make this clear that remembering the facts of the communist era does not mean having homesickness for Communism”, he points out.

He's got a surreal touch. Those that look like baskets for decorated red-star paper are actually air cleaners, that release oxygen to pass the air from the carbon dioxide that comes in. Soviet-type gas masks, the kind of masks that Albania provided when it was friendly with Moscow, which are aching corridors, remind visitors of the growing anxiety that this country was supposed to become home to 300 people.

The complex is limited, but not small. In his heart is a large seat enough to hold 100 people. From here, Hoxha and the elite of the regime would read speeches for those locked up within this shelter resistant to atomic attacks. Now it's turned into a concert theatre and place, when it enters there's a small bar, where jazz and rock concerts are performed. There is poetic irony here, because both are musical snakes that were banned during the Hodge regime.

Other concerts are planned to take place in this building, which is quickly becoming one of the most tourist attractions in Albania. Boridino says there are other plans.

My next option is one of the southern Bunc'Art corridors 1, in which I want to create a photographic examination of scenes from everyday life, always referring to the communist era. This will be an opportunity to introduce visitors to another part of the country that has now disappeared”, Bollino says.

The “in September will prove a kind of theater involved. I will restore characters from the past to the Bunk'Art corridors, and visitors can meet and interact with them. This is another step towards an even more ambitious project dealing with the installation of a base for virtual” reality, Italian journalist says.

Meanwhile, Bunk '%Art is becoming a reason to visit Tirana. Senada Murati, part of the team taking care of the complex, says there has been a growing interest in visitors from Great Britain and the US and even New Zealand.

Mucho says that Bunk '%Art has been trying to stay as neutral as possible politically, but has turned away from the facts related to Albania's communist isolation. During the 40-year leadership, an estimated 5,500 people and some 250,000 others have been executed. Albanian citizens could be shot immediately if caught trying to cross barriers isolating the country's borders.

I think the museum should be very sensitive. We present here the light and darkness of communism, so people can decide”, she says.

“Some visitors continue to come with Hoxha's picture in his pocket”, Murati shows.