TITO BUNKER

Open to the public since 2011, this fallout shelter (Titov Bunker) was the second most expensive infrastructure in socialist Yugoslavia, after the Željava air base near Bihać. Officially called "Atomic Warfare Command D-0" (Atomska Ratna Komanda D-0, ARK D-0), it cost the equivalent of 20 billion euros today, mobilizing 30,000 workers during twenty-six years of work. Completely preserved and now the property of the Bosnian army, the installation hosts guided tours and an evolving contemporary art exhibition spread throughout the immense 6,500^m2 complex, which sinks almost 300 m underground. If it is nicknamed "Tito's bunker", it is because the Yugoslav president ordered its construction in 1953, for fear of reprisals after the break with the USSR in 1948. The attack never came. Neither did Tito. Completed in 1979, a year before the Marshal's death, the base was designed to withstand a 20 megaton nuclear attack and to house 350 soldiers and apparatchiks in complete autonomy for six months. At the beginning of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the bunker was almost destroyed in 1992, but was saved in extremis. It played no role during the conflict and was preserved with all its equipment and facilities. Today, the site is still well preserved despite some water infiltration.

Hospital, swimming pool and Tito's room. The access is hidden by the garage door of a large white house. You then have to pass through three armored doors 1 m thick to enter a 220 m long corridor going down to 280 m underground. You then enter the immense fallout shelter itself. In the shape of a "U", it houses twelve "blocks", each with a function: conferences (^Nos. 4 and 5), communications (No. 6), air treatment (No. 9), fuel (No. 10), water (No. 11), etc. The block n° 8 shelters the apartments of Tito. It consists of four rooms: the bedroom of the marshal and his wife, without frills, with a king-size bed and a rather basic bathroom, his office with Formica furniture and a large photo of himself as a decoration, and the bedroom and office reserved for his secretariat. Lit by 6,000 neon lights, the complex also includes 100 rooms and dormitories, two main kitchens, five collective bathrooms, five command centers equipped with red bakelite telephones, a center for coded messages (Siemens teletypewriters), a hospital and a swimming pool with 170^m3 of water.