The boxy building with grey concrete walls would vanish into the side of the road if it weren’t for the ivy, turning green to red, and a large food advertisement on the other side asking: “What gnocchi type are you?”
Our guide’s solemn expression suggests he has far more pressing questions than gnocchi on his mind.
He unlocks a silver padlock, ushers us into a gloomy stairwell and down 40 concrete steps.
The traffic noise vanishes, replaced by a silent, dry air and neon-lit underground world most Berliners hoped belonged to their past rather than their future.
This sprawling bunker complex, just north of Berlin’s city centre, was built exactly a century ago in a reinforced concrete space between the street above and the U-Bahn tunnel below.
An airlock, in the Pankstrasse nuclear fallout shelter in Berlin.
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