A little piece of history
Brno is a city of only 400,000 inhabitants, yet it boasts plenty of entertainment, attractions and historical monuments. On this beautiful sunny summer morning, I went downtown and visited a small piece of history. The bunker, called Kryt 10-Z in Czech, was an air raid shelter built during World War II against American and Soviet bombs. At the beginning of the twentieth century, it was formed in the rock of the terrain below the baroque Špilberk Castle. The works were carried out by drilling and blasting. This long corridor system was created with good ventilation. This bunker was able to shelter almost 500 people.
After the war times
Half a year after the war, a wine merchant and his business partner, Hermann Lövy and Karel Šmíd rented the facility. They sold Moravian, Hungarian and French wines and their business, the Löwy & Šmíd, was very successful. In 1948, the government confiscated the wine shop.
It later came into the possession of the Czechoslovak People’s Army, the armed forces of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. It was converted into a nuclear bunker, which is when it got the name “10-Z”. The passages were expanded, the walls were covered with bricks and equipped with the technologies available at the time. The shelter has a floor area of 1,500 square meters and a total of 65 rooms. The facility also has a 50 cubic meter water reservoir, an air filter system and a 60 kW Škoda power generator. The indoor temperature is about 18°C, so 64.4°F. Fortunately, it was never necessary to use the bunker as intended.
“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
– Baruch Spinoza
An interactive exhibition
Since 2016, the bunker has been declared a monument-type technical building, turned into an interactive exhibition and has been open to visitors since then. We can choose from several options. You can take part in a guided tour, go on an individual discovery trip based on a map or even rent a room in the nuclear shelter for 24 hours and take a night walk. You can take photos, but making videos is not allowed. There is no phone signal, but local Wi-Fi is provided.
It was very interesting, I could see and touch many things. There were a lot of video recordings where I could listen to interesting historical facts in English or with English subtitles. I never liked history classes at school, although I had great teachers who taught me well. Somehow, I always preferred to go to the places where the events once happened and to see with my own eyes the small remaining pieces of history.
“Life is a culmination of the past, an awareness of the present, an indication of a future beyond knowledge, the quality that gives a touch of divinity to matter.”
– Charles Lindbergh