Until 1985, Albania was one of the most isolated countries in the world. For 40 years it was ruled by Enver Hoxha, whose strange brand of Communism mistrusted both East and West and led to a paranoid building boom in bunkers to protect the country against invasion.
The Albanian government built an estimated 700,000 concrete bunkers – this in a country of only three million people. So much money was spent on the bunkers that Albania had a chronic housing shortage and one of the worst infrastructures in Europe.
This trailer for the film “Concrete Albania“ shows just how numerous they are – dotting the hillsides and lining the edges of beaches and fields. It also shows how the Albanians have reused this odd legacy of their Communist past – as storage sheds, bars, or even to live in!
Way back in 2008, Gadling blogger Jeffrey White wrote about visiting the Albanian bunkers. I’ve posted on visiting a World War II German bunker in Belgium and bunkers in the UK that the Brits built so they didn’t suffer the same fate as the Belgians. We’re bananas about bunkers here at Gadling!