Berlin is a city built on a gigantic swamp. Over the centuries, this swamp has been drained to expand the city. Despite this, the current Berlin has 6% of its surface covered with water and the city's surface is sand. This soft and easily transformable soil was perfect for the construction of subways and bunkers during the Nazi era. The National Socialist regime carried out large construction works in the capital, but despite this, for every square meter raised on the surface, six square meters were built underground.
Since 1997, the Berlin Underground Worlds Foundation -Berliner Unterwelten- is dedicated to the preservation, musealization and dissemination of everything related to the underground world of the German capital. Their activities focus on the conservation and study of the Berlin subsoil, but they also dedicate part of their activity to dissemination through visits to underground bunkers and other facilities.
How to get there?
The Berliner Unterwelten ticket office is located at the exit of the station Gesundbrunnen/Nordkreuz. To get there you can take the S-bahn lines S1, S2, S26, S41, S42 or the metro line U8 . The different activities offered by this association start from there.
Bunker opening hours
Berliner Unterwelten offers two different activities:
- Permanent exhibition Mythos Germania :
- April-October – from Tuesday to Sunday. 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.
- November-March – Saturday and Sunday. 11:00-16:00
- Bunker visiting hours :the foundation offers different guided tours at different times. For more information, you can consult the activities offered at the following LINK.
Visit the bunkers in Berlin
Berliner Unterwelten offers different options to visit the bunkers in Berlin:
- Germania Myths Exhibition . This is a permanent exhibition on Hitler's construction plan for Berlin. According to the myth spread by the main architect of the Reich and a personal friend of Hitler, Albert Speer, the Führer would have proposed changing the name of the German capital to Germania. The main piece of the exhibition is a huge model of the city project, a copy of the one made by Speer for Hitler in the 1940s.
- “Worlds in darkness” tour . In this guided tour, a civil protection bunker from the Second World War is visited for 90 minutes. During the tour, it is explained what life was like for Berliners under Allied aerial bombardment.
- Tour “From protection tower to mountain of rubble”. Visit one of the three Flak Turm of the city of Berlin, in charge of anti-aircraft protection of the capital. 90-minute visit.
- Cold War Nuclear Bunkers Tour . Visit two cold war civil defense bunkers in West Berlin. 90-minute visit.
- “Escapes under the Berlin Wall” tour . Specific tour on escapes through the Berlin wall during the cold war. The tour will take you into different tunnels built by citizens from both sides to allow exit from East Berlin. 120-minute visit.
Recommendations for visiting the bunkers in Berlin
Visits to the underground bunkers of Berlin from Berliner Unterwelten They are in high demand because they have a monopoly over almost all of the city's historic subways. This association was created in 1997 with the intention of protecting and disseminating everything related to the underground constructions of the German capital, so its main activity is not guided tours. If you want to visit a bunker in Berlin with them you must take into account the following:
- Visits to the bunkers are carried out exclusively in guided groups. Individual access is not possible.
- Few visits per day are made . To know the schedules of visits to the bunkers, click on this LINK.
- General tous CANNOT be booked in advance. Some special tours can only be done by appointment.
- Tickets are only sold half an hour before the start of the visit.
- Up to a maximum of 4 tickets per person are sold.
- Groups have a maximum capacity of 30 people. Once that number is reached, people who have not been able to buy a ticket are left out of the visit.
