Titov Bunker

Located 7 km southeast of Konjic, this fallout shelter (Titov Bunker) was the second most expensive infrastructure in socialist Yugoslavia, after the Željava air base near Bihać. Officially called "Atomic War Command D-0" (Atomska Ratna Komanda D-0, ARK D-0), it cost the equivalent of 20 billion euros today and mobilized 30,000 workers during twenty-six years of construction. Completely preserved and now the property of the Bosnian army, the facility hosts guided tours and an evolving contemporary art exhibition spread across the immense 6,500^m2 complex, which plunges almost 300 m underground. If it's nicknamed "Tito's bunker", it's 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 start of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the bunker was almost destroyed in 1992, but was saved in extremis. It played no part in the conflict and was preserved with all its equipment and installations. Even today, the site is well preserved, despite some water infiltration.

Hospital, swimming pool and Tito's room. Access is concealed by the garage door of a large, detached white house. You then have to pass through three 1 m thick armoured doors to enter a 220 m long corridor descending 280 m underground. This leads to the huge fallout shelter itself. U-shaped, it houses twelve "blocks", each with its own function: conferences (^nos. 4 and 5), communications (no. 6), air treatment (no. 9), fuel (no. 10), water (no. 11), etc. Block 8 houses Tito's apartments. It comprises four rooms: the marshal's and his wife's unadorned bedroom, with king-size bed and rather basic en-suite bathroom; his study, with Formica furniture and a large photo of himself as decoration; and the bedroom and study reserved for his secretariat. Lit by 6,000 neon lights, the complex also includes 100 rooms and dormitories, two main kitchens, five communal bathrooms, five command centers equipped with red bakelite telephones, a coded message center (Siemens teletypewriters), a hospital and a 170^m3 swimming pool.