3650: Bunk Art Museum - Tirana city guide

Update: 2021-02-06

Description

To understand Albania's history it is imperative to visit the giant bunker built to protect Enver Hoxha and his inner circle in the event of an atomic attack, the museum and contemporary art space Bunk Art museum.

The bunker was built between 1981 and 1986 as a shelter for top interior ministry officials and was big enough to easily hold hundreds of people. Now The museum and art space reflect the city initiative to use culture to celebrate the birth of a new era, whilst remembering its intense past. The underground long and reverberating dark corridors are accessed along a creepy 200-metre tunnel that blasts out eerie soundscapes, almost resembling a dark movie. A lonely walk through the subterranean labyrinth tunnels makes you descend into a musty five-storey bunker that feels like it was abandoned the day before.

It intends to unearth the memory of tens of thousands of people who were imprisoned and executed by the communist regime as an acoustic experience of intrinsic value. An excellent re-imagining of a Communist-era nuclear bunker scenario through sound installations that can inspire the work of a sound designer like myself.

So whether you're spending a day or a week in this city, now you have a glimpse of the best places to go and be immersed by the multitude of surrounding sounds that Tirana has to offer.

Recorded by Rafael Diogo as a city sound guide for Cities and Memory - see more at https://citiesandmemory.com/city-sound-guides