At 58 metres tall - just a little taller than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, but with considerably more heft - the St Pauli bunker in Hamburg, Germany, has dominated the city skyline for more than 80 years since it was built in World War II under the Nazi regime. Built this concrete hulk has had a surprising rebirth. The relaunched Hamburg Bunker is now packed with two restaurants, a five-storey Hard Rock Hotel and a newly built pyramid-like rooftop bar and garden.
The hotel has the kind of modern details you'd expect in any self-respecting hip hotel, such as self check-in, smart technology and co-working spaces. Bar-restaurant Karo & Paul opened as a bar in April and occupies the first three levels of the building. The restaurant area is still coming soon.
On the fifth floor is the restaurant La Sala – Spanish for living room - offering lofty views. The Hamburg bunker was one of eight flak towers – above-ground anti-aircraft bunkers which doubled as air raid shelters - which Germany built after British air raids on Berlin in 1940. Following the end of World War II, Germany was eager to shed all signs of the former Nazi regime, but this 76,000-tonne concrete behemoth with walls 2.
5 meters thick can't be easily demolished or ignored. Civilians were initially accommodated in the building during Germany's postwar housing crisis. The space was later used by a German TV station and other businesses.
Since the 1990s, it has become known as the "media bunker," housing around 40 organisations including nightclubs, radio stations and studios, according to Hamburg's official tourism website. The only flak tower to have been completely destroyed is one at Berlin's zoo, as the others are in heavily populated areas where the explosives involved would be too great a risk. "The idea of raising the height of the building with greenery was to add something peaceful and positive to this massive block left over from the Nazi dictatorship," Anita Engels, from the Hilldegarden neighbourhood association in Hamburg which supported the project, told AFP.
More than 1000 bunkers were built in Hamburg during the war to protect its residents from heavy bombing by the British and American air forces. The St Pauli bunker provided shelter for about 25,000 people sought shelter there during the air raids of 1943. An exhibition on the first floor now tells the full story of the building's history.
This includes testimonies from people who lived in the wartime bunker as well as records of the hundreds of forced laborers who built it in just 300 days..
