From Nazi fortress to luxury hotel
One of the largest Nazi-era bunkers in Germany is to be converted into a luxury hotel with a fifth-storey roof garden.
Flak Tower IV in Hamburg, a squat concrete block 38m high with walls 3.5m thick, was built by 1000 forced labourers in 1942.
The fortress-like structure was designed to shelter 18,000 people from Allied bombing raids.
It was armed with four heavy antiaircraft guns.
The building has been left largely undisturbed since the war, partly because of concerns that the explosives needed to demolish it could cause serious damage to the surrounding area.
In 1990 the city sold it to property investors and its rooms were leased out to various arts companies and a nightclub called Uebel & Gefahrlich (Sick and Dangerous).
By the middle of 2021, however, the Spanish company NH Hotel Group plans to turn it into a 136-room hotel with a bar, coffee shop and sports hall.
Prices will start about €100 (NZ$175) a night.
The centrepiece of the development is a pyramid-shaped rooftop park, which will feature a memorial centre for the victims of the Third Reich.
Paul Hahnert, chief executive of the bunker’s landlord, EHP, said the project would ‘‘respect the building’s history at the same time as pointing into an optimistic future’’.
But Elinor Schues, a local architect, said it was wrong to turn a sinister visual reminder of the Nazi regime into ‘‘something cuddly and green’’.
‘‘My uncle stood up there as a 16-yearold and shot at the English aeroplanes,’’ she told Deutschlandfunk Kultur, a radio station.
‘‘Those youths who had to man the flak cannon, the forced labourers who built the bunker and its whole appearance – all this should demonstrate the strength and brutality of National Socialism.’’