Underground Hospital and Bombshelter in Berat

A fairly spacious tunnel system in the city of Berat. According to some sources, the facility was intended to serve as an underground hospital.

It consists of three parallel adits running more than a hundred metres into the mountain, connected by cross-passages housing dozens of rooms divided by partition walls — presumably hospital wards. There are two water reservoirs and several lateral dead-end branches. From the left adit, a gently sloping, narrow inclined passage leads somewhere upward (likely an unfinished emergency exit) but ends in a dead end. The adits are tall and wide — a truck could easily roll through the left portal. Behind the middle portal, three successive thin concrete blast doors with airlocks have survived. The right portal has sliding gates and a loading/unloading platform. There are no external security doors or life-support systems. The rock face above the tunnels rises 160–170 metres, providing reliable protection through sheer mass.

From information uncovered during research, the facility’s configuration and purpose changed several times, which is why construction dragged on for a very long time — starting in the 1960s — and was still unfinished by the late 1980s. The underground hospital theory is just one of many. The final design may well have been intended to combine a hospital, underground storage, manufacturing, and a large-scale urban shelter.

Nowadays the facility is used by the municipality to store street festive decorations — Christmas trees, reindeer-and-sleigh installations, various collapsible glowing arches, Valentine’s hearts, fairground stalls and the like. Behind the middle portal lie coffins.

The site has no meaningful security and opens onto one of the busiest streets in the city. The right adit is always locked; someone regularly knocks a hole through the wooden gates of the middle one. The left adit is always freely accessible — just squeeze under the decrepit rusty gates and climb over the next set. Thanks to the open access, there is quite a bit of litter inside, and it smells not unlike a public toilet.