Bunk’Art 2

The tunnel of the Ministry of Internal Affairs was built between 1981 and 1986, and it is one of the most recent “great works” carried out by the communist regime as part of the bunkerization project, which began in the early 1970s and resulted in the construction of 175.000 bunkers of various sizes across the country.

The bunkers were built in three different styles: on mountaintops, in buildings, and in trenches. The Ministry of Internal Affairs bunker is of the “pit” type, and was built by the Construction Enterprise 10 (a directorate of the Ministry of Construction that dealt with the construction of secret bunkers), which opened a large pit near the Ministry of Internal Affairs building (the Ministry building built in the 1930s by the Italian project): after the implementation of the internal spaces, the upper structure was topped with a thick layer of reinforcing steel (thickness can be seen along the exit stairs).

This bunker, codenamed “Objekti Shtylla,” has 24 rooms, an apartment for the Minister of Internal Affairs, and a vast hall for intercommunications. This bunker, like many others of its size, was constructed to survive a chemical and nuclear assault. In fact, the bunker was never utilized for training.

Prime Minister Mehmet Shehu and dictator Enver Hoxha, who authorized its construction, never saw it completed since they both died before the bunker was completed. The bunker’s entrance and exit were just recently created, since the original proposal only allowed access to the tunnel from inside the Ministry.