Mount Soratte bunker. Built on Mussolini’s orders in the mid-1930s, it was requisitioned and completed by the Nazis; it later became the headquarters of the Southern European Command. On January 6, 1944, partisans found the bunker’s water pipes and poisoned them. As soon as the first German began to feel ill, the Wehrmacht shut off all the taps, but continued (as per the redundant plan) with draining the mountain’s limestone. Each large room had a double “U” shaped ceiling to drain water into lateral channels, water that filters abundantly even today. A few months later, the Americans arrived and found the bunker on fire. They had to wait a full 5 days for the temperature inside to become acceptable. The bunker was declassified in 2004 and opened to the public a few years later (with electric light and without torches since around 2018). It had been built by order of Mussolini as an air raid shelter, but never used, then requisitioned and completed by the Nazis; then bombed by the Americans, sabotaged by the partisans and finally set on fire by the Germans. During the Cold War, part of the bunker had been heavily reinforced for anti-nuclear purposes (for example, with 12m reinforced concrete walls and surfaces suspended by steel shock absorbers and a layer of borated polyethylene to absorb nuclear radiation). It would have housed 50 members of the government (the President of the Republic and his wife, 5 ministers and their wives and (their undersecretaries and spouses) and 50 NATO technicians (including a psychologist). I recommend a visit. A piece of history (hopefully from the past).
