Italy is Turning a Secret Underground Bunker into a Brand-New Museum, Canada Reviews

Hidden in the hills outside Verona in Italy sits a 13,000 square metre underground complex with more than 100 rooms, a gym, a bar, mechanics’ workshops, and walls still plastered with vintage erotic posters left behind by military staff decades ago. Named West Star, it’s also about to become one of the most unusual museums in the country.

The story behind Verona’s ‘West Star’ bunker

Built between 1960 and 1966 near the town of Affi just outside Verona, West Star served as a key Nato command-and-control centre, designed to coordinate military operations across southern Europe in the event of a nuclear attack. Engineered to withstand nuclear, chemical and biological strikes, the bunker was stocked with filtration systems, protected shower areas, kitchens, water tanks and dormitories; enough to keep 300 personnel alive underground for a full month. It hosted military exercises until 2004, was decommissioned in 2007, and has sat largely unused since Italy’s defence ministry handed it over to the town of Affi in 2018. 

That’s now all changing, as the Italian parliament has approved €7 million in funding to transform the site into a museum by 2029. Part of it is expected to open to the public as early as next summer. Marco Sega, the mayor of Affi, called the funding approval ‘a historic moment for our community,’ adding that the next job is making sure the money is well spent so the base can reopen to visitors as soon as possible.

What to expect from the new Cold War museum

The museum has been years in the making. A University of Florence team began mapping the site back in 2022, digitising technical documents and interviewing around two dozen former staff about daily life inside. Visitors will eventually be able to access between 70 and 80 percent of the complex, walking through the infirmary, canteen, kitchens and the original war room, following one of three separate routes designed for families, school groups or Cold War history buffs.

Exhibits will include original maps, huge electricity generators and humidity-recycling evaporation towers. You’ll also get to see some of the most advanced computers of the 1960s and ’70s, including what’s believed to be one of Europe’s earliest ARPANET systems, the pioneering network that eventually became the internet.

Michelangelo Pivetta, the architecture professor who led the mapping project, says the museum is a chance to revisit a chapter of history that doesn’t get talked about nearly enough. Annual visitor numbers are expected to reach around 100,000 once the site is fully open.

Fancy more unusual wartime history? Here’s how Berlin turned a former bunker into a museum dedicated to Ukraine.

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