Any visitor to the Southeast European country of Albania will undoubtedly stumble across one of its hundreds of thousands of concrete bunkers that have dotted the landscape for over six decades. They are a ubiquitous sight – with an average of nearly 15 bunkers per square mile.
The bunkers, known as bunkerët in Albanian, were built during the paranoid communist government of Enver Hoxha from the 1960s to the 1980s, as it fortified the country in defence against a foreign invasion that never came. Over 750,000 bunkers were built, though many have been removed to make way for urban development or blown up by scrap merchants to harvest and sell their steel. But many still remain, abandoned, or even repurposed as agricultural stores, as creative spaces for artists and even wineries.
Built to ward off an invasion by both the Soviet Union and its satellite states and NATO states, they now stand as a must-see attraction for those wishing to learn about the Cold War.
Hoxha’s program of “bunkerisation” resulted in the construction of bunkers in every corner of the then-People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, stretching from mountain passes to city streets.
Over 175,000 of the most common type of bunker remain – the “mushroom” box – built as firing positions for machine guns.
Despite the extensive construction program, the bunkers were never used for their intended purpose during the years that Hoxha government, and their cost became a drain on Albania’s resources. This further strained the country’s housing shortage and poor roads.
To put this into perspective, the total cost of the bunkers in Albania cost twice as much as the Maginot Line in France – built in the 1930s to deter invasion by Nazi Germany – and consumed twice as much concrete.
According to her 1998 book on Albania’s transition, Elez Biberaj said that on average, each bunker cost the equivalent of a two-room apartment and the resources used to build them could easily have resolved Albania’s chronic housing shortage.
The bunkers were abandoned following the dissolution of the communist government in 1992. While a few were used in the Insurrection of 1997 (widespread civil unrest due to economic issues) and the Kosovo War of 1999, most now lie derelict.
In 1998, a BBC reporter described how they were ubiquitous on the road between Tirana and the city’s airport, “looking down from every hillside, sprouting out of every bank”.
While some have been reused as animal housing or storehouses, others remain in their derelict state due to their solidity, which makes removing them expensive.
Over the years, many suggestions have been made for what to do with them, including pizza ovens, beehives, mushroom farms, beach huts, and even youth hostels.
In 2014, a five-storey nuclear shelter near Tirana for Hoxha was opened as a tourist attraction and art exhibition and contains exhibits from World War Two and the Hoxhaist period.
Today, the bunkers stand as a national symbol, with pencil holders and ashtrays in the shape of the bunkers becoming Albania’s most popular tourist souvenirs. One such line of bunker souvenirs was promoted with the message: “Greetings to the land of the bunkers. We assumed that you could not afford to buy a big one.”