Command Bunker of the Tirana District

Two underground structures that once served as the command post for the city of Tirana, housing the municipal administration and civil defence headquarters. One is older — set deeper into the ravine — the other more recent, closer to the city.

Until the early 2010s the site was still relatively active, with military guards on duty. Later the garrison was disbanded, the facilities were left open, and everything worth stealing in metal was stripped out. Because the structures sit in a fold between hills, rainwater and clay seep inside during wet weather. The older building has suffered particularly: one of its entrances is barely visible from the road, and inside there is year-round sludge underfoot. The waterline marks on the walls show that the place floods to about a metre at times. The older structure still has rotting wooden doors, on which inscriptions like “prefect”, “department”, and similar titles remain legible here and there. The newer structure has no doors at all — they were concrete with iron mesh inserts, and have long since gone. Even so, it looks considerably better preserved. The walls are painted, and slogans about defending the fatherland appear here and there. Communist slogans have been whitewashed over, but they show through. Next to the newer structure is a small tunnel built to house a generator — the generator itself, of course, is long gone. Its walls, however, are rather prettily painted with little flowers.