Bunk’Art 1

About Bunk’Art 1

By the ULTIMATE Tirana Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Bunk’Art 1 occupies a huge bunker dug into the hillside on the eastern edge of the city, built in the 1970s for the country’s leadership. Its rooms tell the history of Albania from the Second World War to 1991, with art installations along the way. It is near the lower station of the Dajti cable car: combine the two. Open daily; check times on the website.

A bunker for the leadership

In the 1970s, as Enver Hoxha’s Albania cut itself off from both East and West, the regime built hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers across the country. The biggest of all was dug into the hillside on the eastern edge of Tirana: a nuclear shelter for the political and military elite, with more than a hundred rooms spread over five levels.

It was kept secret for decades and was never used for its purpose. After the fall of communism it lay forgotten until it was opened to the public as Bunk’Art, a combined museum and art space.

More than a hundred rooms on five levels, dug into the hillside for a war that never came.

What you see

Some forty rooms now hold exhibitions about the bunker and about Albanian life from the Italian occupation through the Second World War and the communist decades, with documents, uniforms, photographs and reconstructed rooms. You can see the assembly hall where the leadership would have met, and the private rooms set aside for Hoxha himself.

Other rooms are given over to contemporary art, video and sound, which makes the cold, echoing corridors feel strange and alive at the same time.

Getting there

Bunk’Art 1 is on Rruga Fadil Deliu, on the road towards the Dajti Ekspres cable car, a short taxi ride or a city bus ride from the centre. It is easy to combine the two in a single half day: the bunker in the morning, the mountain in the afternoon.

Our advice: bring a light jacket, as it stays cool underground even in August, allow two hours, and visit Bunk’Art 2 in the centre on another day for the story of the secret police.

Opening hours, prices and seasonal openings change, so please check with Bunk’Art 1 before you go.