The bunker tour takes you to Csepel Works, which used to be the biggest industrial plant in Hungary. In World War Two the plant was one of the major targets of Allied bombings in Hungary.
Air raid shelters and bunkers were first built on the territory of the plant as early as in 1938. Effective and reliable protection against heavy bombing, however, was only provided by the seventeen bunkers protecting from bomb, gas and scattering chips. The first bunker of this type was built in May 1943. During the bombings of 1944 nearly all the manufacturing workshops were demolished but the workers in the bunkers survived.
None of these bunkers have been pulled down but today, of course, they are used for purposes other than protecting people. After the fall of the one-party Communist system in Hungary (’change of the regime’) in 1989-1990, they were sold to private investors, who gradually removed the original furnishing and devices/equipment and, by shutting down all the piping ends, ventilation inlets/outlets, valves etc., placed the machinery of the bunkers out of operation. Most of the seventeen bunkers are used today as warehouses, asset collection points or even rehearsal rooms for rock bands.
Bunker nr 2, from where plenty of equipment, tools and devices have also ’been gone’ in the past few decades, has been reinstated and is now visited by hundreds of people every week.
Tours in English and German start this year. Details to follow on this website soon.
Interested? Please contact us at info@bpscenes.com. Photo gallery from the bunkers (3 bunkers can be visited, 1 of them is fully equipped): https://budapestscenes.com/bunkertura-galeria