The average tourist is always looking for something special, something to tell friends and neighbors about when he gets home, something that others who have visited the same town/place haven’t been to. In other words, something to brag about. In that case, The Folimanka Civil Protection Shelter is for sure one of those places. A full size (1332 m²) bomb shelter that’s still fully functional and has been there since the late 1950s, early 1960s, yep the cold war era.
The first plans were made1952 and it took about 10 years to finish the project, a top secret project! The walls are at tops 3 meter thick, it is supposed to stand up to a small atomic bomb, a 0,2 MPa shockwave, somebody with better fysik skills than me would probably understand that, I don’t? If you want to know this and a lot more about the Folimanka shelter there’s an Open House Day on one Saturday every month, starting at 09.00 and they close at 15.00, make sure you don’t get stuck 😉 You’ll find more information here: www.krytfolimanka.cz. The tour is free and unguided. You will also be handed an information leaflet which is a really good guide when walking along the long corridors in the shelter.
If Prague is familiar to you since before this might really be an alternative to a little different attraction. To get a scary feeling of what it would be if the worst comes to the worst. Because if you’re not walking around blindfolded, scary is what it is. All the small rooms, separate WC for men and women, the sanitation area with its showers, dust chambers, there’s even a two morgue that can hold up to 10 bodies each and a lot more of course. As for today the shelter is also used as an exhibition area, which itself is worth a visit.
