Nazi Bunker’s Leafy Makeover Turns Ugly Past Into Urban Eyecatcher
In Hamburg, a leisure palace has replaced anti-aircraft cannons as the city reinvents itself without leaving its past behind.
The Green Bunker in the St Pauli district of Hamburg.
Photographer: Ulrich Perrey/picture alliance/Getty Images
In central Hamburg, a gray behemoth blotted the skyline near the city’s Reeperbahn party boulevard for decades, but this summer the former flak tower was revived. Instead of anti-aircraft cannons, a new five-storey leisure palace was tacked on top.
The addition to the hulking block of reinforced concrete houses restaurants, sports facilities and a hotel. Renamed the Green Bunker, a so-called mountain path weaves around the exterior of the edifice, providing public access to a leafy garden at the new summit and integrating the relic of Germany’s Nazi past into the trendy St. Pauli district.