A listening post, not only a shelter
The hotel rooms were wired, and recorded from below.
Jklamo โ CC BY-SA 4.0 ยท x70tjw โ CC BY-SA 2.0 ยท Ben Skรกla โ CC BY-SA 3.0 ยท CC BY-SA 4.0
It is the square where Czechoslovaks gathered at their defining moments: protesting the Soviet invasion in 1968, where the student Jan Palach burned himself in 1969 against the surrender that followed, and where hundreds of thousands massed in 1989 in the Velvet Revolution that brought down the regime peacefully. The shelter is directly beneath it.
Probably not. The tour passes through narrow corridors and closed underground rooms behind heavy steel doors, and that is part of the intended effect. Anyone who struggles in enclosed spaces is better avoiding it.
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A secret nuclear shelter beneath the Hotel Jalta on Wenceslas Square, opened to visitors after remaining classified into the 1990s. The hotel was built in 1958 at the height of the Cold War, and beneath it โ unknown to the guests โ a blast-hardened shelter was designed for some two hundred people, reserved for the military and party leadership. It holds communications rooms, an air-filtration system, generators and heavy steel doors. The heavier detail is that the shelter was not only for protection: it was a listening post as well. The hotel's rooms were fitted with microphones, and foreign guests โ diplomats, journalists, businessmen โ were recorded from below. The equipment is still in place. Visits are by guided tour at set times, and the underground space is narrow and cold. Book ahead, as places are limited.
The hotel rooms were wired, and recorded from below.
Communications, filtration and generators remain as they were left.
Wenceslas Square is directly above, the stage of 1968 and 1989.
Wenceslas Square, beneath the Hotel Jalta