While traveling across the picturesque expanses of Albania, it is impossible not to notice the evidence of the country’s total militarization. The communist regime led by Enver Hoxha placed the solving of military tasks above economic and social ones. During Hoxha’s rule (1941-1985), fearing invasion from all of its neighbors, Albania built a remarkably diverse defense infrastructure. More than 700 thousand small bunkers were constructed: one for every 4 inhabitants of the country. Their density reaches 24 per square kilometer. The small bunkers were placed in groups of three or even more, at the points where an enemy attack was most likely. In addition, with substantial technical and material support from its allied communist powers, first the USSR and later China, who wanted to strengthen their strategic interests in the Mediterranean region, underground shelters for submarines and boats, underground air bases, protected command posts, and even factories were carved deep into the Albanian rock. However, after the fall of the regime in 1992, almost all objects of this kind were decommissioned, mothballed, or simply abandoned. In this article, we’ll tell you about one such abandoned underground plant that…
On that December day, after a failed attempt to set foot on the territory of one of the air bases, my exhausted comrades comforted themselves with nothing but the thought of watching the sunset from the top of a snow-covered mountain range. The car sped swiftly up a winding serpentine road when, suddenly, outside the window, a practiced eye caught the outlines of distinctive structures scattered along the slope of a rocky hill, forcing us to change our route immediately and unconditionally and to rethink our plans for the evening.
Leaving the road, we headed straight into the forest, where, just a few meters ahead of us, stood the huge reinforced concrete ventilation cabins we had spotted earlier, concealing bottomless shafts that, at a rough guess, dropped some fifty meters deep.
Nobody had any desire to descend into the cold, dark abyss along the vertical cable line, so we continued to explore the surroundings, making our way to the base of the mountain and passing many technical structures, hoods, cooling towers, and the remains of the perimeter along the way.
And so we descended into the valley of a small town with the Chinese name Politan.
The town itself was built in the 1960s to create an industrial center for manufacturing weapons and ammunition. During the communist regime, the region was closed to foreigners. The production facilities of the military factory sit in the valley, now resembling ruins; the little houses of the workers and their families stood not far away. On the outskirts of the town, right across the road from the private housing sector, dozens of portals sealed with thick concrete gates run behind the sagging barbed wire down to the base of the rock.
The locals eye foreigners with distrust; tourists are rarely seen here, especially in winter. After a cursory look at the site from behind the fence, we hurried to withdraw so as not to attract undue attention to ourselves. As soon as the midnight gloom descended over the mountains, our team once again set foot on a steep path, our silhouettes gliding like shadows along the ledges of rocks and concrete structures, lit by the dim beam of a flashlight.
After squeezing through the air intake of one of the portals overgrown with olive trees, we found ourselves in a ventilation room. Huge air conditioning systems, refrigerators, blowers, and other equipment were installed here. The ducts are large enough to move almost freely through them between the blocks of the complex.
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Immediately beyond the technical premises, endless tunnels run deep into the mountains; the arches are high enough here to allow cargo vehicles to pass through.
Just a vague sense of the scale of the place we had discovered was enough to set the heart racing; the beam of a powerful flashlight picked out the first hall, and surprise gave way to elation: this was a real underground plant!
All of the production facilities of the above-ground plant were fully duplicated underground. Chinese engineers and builders managed to erect a complex of protected bunkers covering a total area of at least several hectares, housing assembly lines and ammunition assembly stations, explosives depots, packaging lines, machine shops, laboratories and administrative offices, life-support systems, and even something resembling an underground power plant.
Structurally, the complex takes the form of arched blocks approximately 500 meters long and 10 meters high, interconnected by tunnels.
The first thing that catches the eye is the multitude of intact machines and abandoned equipment, almost untouched by looters. I had come across reports of abandoned underground factories many times before, but I had never seen any mention of a site of this kind so well preserved.
With every passing minute our curiosity flared up anew; each new block surprised us with its array of futuristic machines and mechanisms, standing silently frozen beneath the whitewashed arched vaults.
Right underfoot, freshly machined blanks for cartridges lie scattered everywhere: cores, casings, bullets, primers…
We continued our journey through the tunnels and ornate galleries, trying not to miss any interesting detail. The ghost of a worker in a white boiler suit showed us the way, revealing the secrets of his underground domain. In one of the shops stands an automated line for crimping cartridge cases.
Jammed cartridges can still be seen inside the intricate mechanisms. It looks as though, at one moment right in the middle of production, all the machines were shut down in a hurry and the workers abruptly left their posts.
Now only darkness and a dead silence reign here. It is hard to imagine any work ever taking place in these deserted workshops. It took two full nights just to walk the entire plant and capture the key scenes.
The unusual machines and ingenious mechanisms give you no chance to look away, inspiring detailed close-up photography.
Most of the equipment was made in China; you can find Chinese characters on the nameplates. The most dangerous part of the production line is sealed off by massive reinforced concrete barriers.
This is where gunpowder was sifted, mixed, and weighed out, and where cartridges were filled with it. Abandoned barrels of gunpowder are still stored here to this day. The floor around the machinery, covered with plastic film, is also coated with a layer of black powder.
The finished ammunition was taken to the packing department, where it was placed in containers and then sent to the warehouse. A few sealed “zinc” ammunition tins still sit on the packing table. Boxes of ammunition were left behind in one of the warehouses as well.
As one would expect, the factory also has various quality-control laboratories, workshops, archives, and utility rooms.
In one corner we even found a small diesel generator. By then our supplies of food and batteries were running low, and having explored enough, we hurried toward the exit, casting a farewell glance at the endless underground spaces as they sank once more into oblivion.
Then, at last, after hours spent underground, the ocean of Albania’s starry sky glittered overhead once more. Tired but content, we set off on our way toward new adventures.