Year 1953, Prague, capital of Czechoslovakia. A group of workers begins the reconstruction of a building in Wenceslas Square, one of the largest in the country and perhaps the most symbolic for its history. Under the mandate of President Antonín Zápatocký, the official goal is to build a hotel in the space left by an Allied bombing error during World War II. What few know is that on that property, underground, one of the biggest secrets of the Cold War is being forged: the construction of an anti-nuclear bunker.
Year 2013, Prague, capital of Czechia. Jirí Paldus, representative of the Czechoslovak Armed Forces Association, a non-profit amateur organization, contacts the management of the Boutique Hotel Jalta, the cover for the Czech military secret that has been operational continuously all these years. He explains his goal: to enable the bunker rooms, which have only served as a warehouse for decades, and turn it into the Cold War Museum.
Thus was born one of the major points of interest in Prague, a way to learn about the recent history of the country underground. Because it is not just about visiting the reinforced concrete structure. When the members of the museum management association arrived, they found an empty place. "There were only some plans with beams and the layout of the space in documents stamped Top Secret."
What the Museum managers have done is turn it into a showcase of objects related to life behind the Iron Curtain, focusing especially on the military aspect, logically.
From the Jalta hotel lobby, you have to take an elevator to descend, accompanied by the guide, perfectly uniformed as a member of the Czech army. The first visitable room is the infirmary, a small field hospital where the occupants of this stronghold could be treated. All the equipment is original, recovered from old facilities, and it is quite eerie to observe. This small room holds one of the bunker's secrets: a cat door accessed on all fours to reach the bunker's escape route, in front of the hotel, right in the middle of Wenceslas Square.
Adjacent to the infirmary is the filter room, essential to prevent contamination, with its electric generators and also a manual one, so that the facility could have enough energy even in case of a total blackout. Nearby are the gas masks, also essential in case of an attack.
But who would be the chosen ones in case of a nuclear attack on the then-called Soviet bloc? For example, the Warsaw Pact generals during their visits to Prague, who coincidentally were always accommodated at the Jalta hotel, just a few flights of stairs away from a safe shelter. Also, civilian and military authorities of the regime. In total, it could accommodate up to 150 people for two weeks, given its dimensions and availability of water and food. Fortunately, it was never used.
A panel with the map of then Czechoslovakia recalls that the danger of war was very real. Different light bulbs mark on the ground the disposition of land and air forces of the Czech and Soviet armies. And also the deployed nuclear weapons, especially close to the border with West Germany. What will the inhabitants of those German cities think when they visit this site and see how close they were to the nuclear threat?
One of the rooms that are most popular among visitors, always in small groups due to space limitations, and with explanations in Czech, German, or English, is the war weapons room. Some mortars, flamethrowers, and also pistols of Czech manufacture (the Czech arms industry has been well known for decades). They even offer the opportunity to hold an AK-47, the Soviet Kalashnikov, and also its Czech equivalent, the Vz.58, to take a photo holding one of these assault rifles as a souvenir.
In the spy room, they recreate how the Czech Intelligence service spied on guests and other occupants of the rooms. In fact, the hotel remembers that most Western high-ranking officials who visited Prague during the Cold War ended up for one reason or another in their establishment... But they also spied on their Russian friends.
The espionage services were also responsible, in many cases, for finding dissidents, and they show the expeditive methods that the communist regime had for interrogating them. Nearby, one of the most valuable devices for the museum owners: a telex machine, the predecessor of the fax, to facilitate communications with the outside world.