Often mysterious, somber and a little otherworldly, subterranean spaces add a sense of depth (no pun intended) to the art installations and performances held within them. Abandoned subway platforms, tunnels beneath old psychiatric hospitals, cisterns, ice wells, bunkers and even manholes invite us to descend beneath the surface of the earth to experience art on another level.

The Water at The Cisterns by Hiroshi Sambuichi

Damp and dreary yet monumental, with the proportions of a cathedral, this former underground water reservoir in Copenhagen was once an unknown beauty beneath the city, but now functions as ’The Cisterns,’ an unusual art venue. Japanese architect Hiroshi Sambuichi delicately transforms the space while paying respect to all of these qualities with ‘The Water,’ a subterranean landscape installation taking viewers on “a journey through an underground sea of light and darkness.” Natural light, moss and an icy glass cube play with the humidity and moisture levels of the space, making it feel a bit like a secret underground forest.

JFK Figurine Hidden in a Desert Bunker

You’re hiking through the unforgiving plains of the California desert when you come upon a mysterious black hatch. Against your better judgment, you open it and climb down the ladder into a huge metal pipe that appears to be part of some kind of bunker. Inside, what you find is more bizarre than pretty much anything you could have imagined: a statue of John F. Kennedy perched on a stool, casually crossing his legs. Artist Will Boone based his sculpture on a figure from a hobby kit, scaling it up to life-size. To him, the installation “speaks not just to all those things that have been driven underground since the extinguished optimism of the sixties but to those same fears – nuclear attack and the invasion of the other – that have been so vividly resurrected in recent times.”

Secret Sculptural Installations Beneath Paris

An artist who wishes to remain anonymous descended into the many subterranean spaces beneath Paris to illegally install secret art installations, each one often requiring many hours of investigative preparation both to access the space, avoid getting caught and keep the art undisturbed for as long as possible, though he’s gone to jail once or twice. The installations themselves often feel like reverent tributes to the people who occupy liminal spaces in society, evoking camps where homeless people and refugees often live.

Repurposed Oil Tanks at the Tate Modern in London

Repurposed by the firm Herzog & de Meuron, the enormous underground oil tanks of a former power station now act as a dramatic backdrop for performances, interactive art and video installations at London’s Tate Modern. “No longer generating electricity, the Tanks generate ideas, creative energy and new possibilities for artists and audiences,” says the museum. “These raw, industrial, subterranean spaces, each measuring over thirty meters across and seven meters high are the world’s first museum galleries permanently dedicated to exhibiting live art, performance, installation and film.” [Middle photo by Ray Tung/Rex Features.]

D.C.’s Dupont Underground Arts Space

The 75,000-square-foot east platform of Washington D.C.’s subterranean trolley station Dupont Underground is now a visual art and performance space hosting revolving exhibitions as well as performances, permanent murals and other programming. Lying beneath the city’s Dupont Circle about a mile from the White House, this underground space was closed off in 1962 when the city’s streetcar system shut down, and remained empty until the new arts space opened in 2015. Among the installations it has hosted is ‘Whimsical Invasion’ by Hyuntek Yoon and Youngeun Kwun, consisting of over 650,000 plastic balls in nylon netting.

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Underground Art 11 Subterranean Galleries Installations Delve Deep

War is over so can we give peace a chance? These abandoned British bomb stores and ammo bunkers are looking peaceful indeed now that the explosives are gone.

The Brits built up their military infrastructure explosively, pardon the pun, before and during the World Wars. Peacetime saw a corresponding deflation with hardened assets such as bomb stores typically abandoned instead of being dismantled.

One such quieted bomb store can be found at RAF Wittering near Peterborough in Cambridgeshire, England. Established in 1916 as an base for zeppelin-fighting BE2C and BE12 aircraft, the base was used by the USAAF in World War II and became the “Home of the Harrier” in the 1970s.

After the war, the base’s bomb stores were expanded and toughened to accommodate nuclear weapons. Flickr user Graeme Hutton (graemehutton) visited the disused and derelict bomb stores at the Wittering Ammo Dump in late July of 2014 and snapped dozens of evocative photos.

RAF Chilmark

RAF Chilmark in Wiltshire was built in 1936 and by 1965 it was the RAF’s only remaining ammunition supply depot. The base was shut down entirely in 1995 but it took the better part of two years to clear live ammunition from the site. Flickr user Newage2 visited the base’s bomb store in early February of 2016.

RAF Chilmark also houses a civil defense bunker built in 1985 and sold to private interests in 1997. In February of 2017, a police raid revealed the bunker had been converted to a large-scale marijuana grow-op. “There are approximately 20 rooms in the building, split over two floors, each 200 feet long and 70 feet wide,” stated Detective Inspector Paul Franklin of the Wiltshire Police Dedicated Crime Team. “Almost every single room had been converted for the wholesale production of cannabis plants, and there was a large amount of evidence of previous crops. This was an enormous set up.” Up in smoke, as they say.

RAF Newton

RAF Newton in Nottinghamshire was built in 1939 and closed in the year 2000. The site is gradually being converted into an industrial estate but not without controversy: radioactive contamination from Radium used to paint luminescent dials in the 1940’s has been detected. Flickr user Goldie87 visited disused parts of RAF Newton in late February of 2008.

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Boom To Busted Abandoned British Bomb Storage Depots

Once they were no longer needed as bunkers, flak towers, forts, airfields and barracks, these military structures sat empty and abandoned, a stark reminder of wars past and those that may occur in the future. But these structures were built to last, and now they serve surprising purposes – like climbing walls, aquariums, hotels, apartment buildings and night clubs.

Flak Towers in Germany – Climbing Walls

Flak towers constructed in Germany and Austria on Adolf Hitler’s orders during World War II have been reclaimed as climbing walls, music schools, shops, nightclubs and even an aquarium. These extremely strong structures were built to counter airborne Allied forces, with concrete walls three meters thick. Their size and durability made them difficult to destroy after the war, and many stood empty and abandoned for decades. Climbing equipment enables visitors to scale the 47-meter-tall (154-foot) Haus des Meeres in Vienna; it was once crowned with a Wurzburg radar dome, and now contains thousands of sea creatures, including a 300,000-liter shark tank.

Airship Hangar – Water Park

The world’s largest freestanding building is an airship hangar built at an abandoned Soviet military base just south of Berlin. Measuring 1,181 feet long and 688 feet wide, the structure was created for the delivery of massive industrial machinery like wind turbines, but a Malaysian firm has converted it into something much more fun: a water park. Tropical Islands Resort contains a 3,000-square-yard swimming pool, 600 feet of sandy beach and 50,000 trees in 600 varieties.

Russian Bunker – Night Club

The 75,000-square-foot Taganskaya Protected Command Point in Russia was in military use from the 1950s to 1986, when it was abandoned. But in the early 2000s, a company purchased the disused subterranean space and transformed it into a Cold War Museum called Bunker 42, which includes a restaurant and night club.

Torpedo Facility – Private Residence

A former Cold War torpedo facility in a London suburb, once used to test submarine technology, is now a stunning round home. The structure once boasted a 160-foot-diameter dome covering a 120-foot-long, 15-foot-deep pool where model torpedoes and submarines were rotated on a large arm up to 150 feet per second. The domed structure had to be removed due to contamination, but the home still features a 4-foot-thick blast wall.

19th Century Gasometer – Apartment Building

A 19th-century gasometer that was also used as an air raid shelter during World War II is now a luxury apartment building. The Fichte-Bunker in Berlin held gas for the city’s street lamps, but when they were switched to electricity in the 1920s, it was no longer needed for this purpose. The walls were reinforced with up to three meters of concrete for its use as a shelter, and 30,000 people allegedly took refuge there on February 3rd, 1945 despite its capacity of 6,000. Once the war was over, it was used as a homeless shelter for decades, and then held emergency supplies for the Cold War. The structure now holds thirteen two-story luxury condos with large grassy upper-level terraces.

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War And Peace 15 Repurposed Military Structures

Bunkers under luxury hotels, wartime factories hidden beneath fake neighborhoods and vast systems of intricately decorated tunnels just beyond humble houses are among the many incredible architectural wonders just out of sight. Often built for top-secret purposes like manufacturing weapons or housing important officials during attacks, these complex and fascinating facilities went undiscovered for decades.

America’s Top-Secret Atomic Cities

“What you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here.” So say posters and billboards that were once posted all over Oak Ridge, Tennessee, one of the United States Government’s three secret cities that toiled away on The Manhattan Project: atomic bombs that would soon devastate two cities in Japan. 75,000 employees lived and worked in Oak Ridge with absolutely no idea what they were actually party to. Their town wasn’t even on the map, and visitors were restricted. They didn’t find out the exact nature of their work until the infamous atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in the final stages of World War II in 1945.

Oak Ridge joined Los Alamos, New Mexico and Richland, Washington as a major research and development site producing fissionable materials for nuclear weapons. Employees brought in from other areas of the country were screened with lie detector tests. There were so many of them in this small town with a former population of just 3,000, the government had to house them in temporary huts. Hundreds of photos of life inside Oak Ridge were captured by Ed Westcott, the only government-authorized photographer during the Manhattan Project. The American Museum of Science and Energy has published them on Tumblr.

Britain’s Secret Underground City of Burlington

You’d never guess that below a charming historic market in Wiltshire, England is an entire underground city inside a system of limestone caves. And it’s not dank and primitive. Built in the 1950s to house 4,000 central Government employees during a nuclear strike, the mile-long facility with sixty miles of roadways has kitchens, laundry facilities, its own pub and even a communications hub from which the Prime Minister would have addressed the nation in the event of a real attack.

The Burlington Bunker can withstand bombs, radiation and poison gas, and was designed to sustain its inhabitants for a three-month stretch. In fact, it boasted an underground lake (now drained) to provide fresh water, and a secret rail line from London for the English Royal Family. Virtually no one knew about the existence of Burlington until 2004, when it was decommissioned – now there are photos, videos and maps available online

The Fake Washington City Hiding Boeing’s Wartime Plant

Anticipating the possibility of a direct attack on its most important facilities during World War II, Boeing didn’t want to take its chances with vast factory roofs that would be clear from the air. So at the Seattle facility known as Boeing Plant 2, the company created a surprisingly convincing form of camouflage in the form of a fake neighborhood. Blending in fairly well with its surroundings, the plant was covered in streets, trees and plywood shells of houses. A Hollywood set designer was brought in to make sure the housing development looked as realistic as possible. Boeing Plant 2 helped turn Seattle into a boomtown for technology, and the bombers built there helped win the war.

Luckily, the ploy was never tested. After the camouflage was removed, the factory sat empty and abandoned for decades before it was demolished in late 2010.

Secret Society in the Catacombs of Paris

The Catacombs of Paris are mysterious enough on their own, an underground ossuary holding the remains of about six million people connecting to a larger system of tunnels throughout the city. But in 2004, they became even more intriguing as police discovered that they were in use as a hidden lair complete with an underground cinema. Using pirated electricity, the 3,000-square-foot space even had a security system mostly made up of recorded barks of guard dogs. What the cops first thought was a bomb later turned out to be a couscous maker. Once their hideout was discovered, those responsible for it came back in the night to claim their equipment, wiring and booze. Parisians wondered what secret society could possibly have been using the space, with news outlets theorizing “extreme right-wing” connections.

The truth is not quite so dramatic, though no less interesting. An anonymous group of Parisian underground explorers calling themselves LMDP built the cinema and other areas nearby over a period of 18 months starting in 1999, and screened Urbex movies for audiences of twenty to thirty people. The main point was escaping the realities above the surface, holding free events for those in the know. Read the whole story at Gizmodo.

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7 Secret Architectural Wonders Of The World

With a population of nearly 13.5 million packed into just 2,448 square miles and a large network of disused bomb shelters, it’s no surprise that some Shanghai businesses are going underground. The Shelter is a new nightclub that makes use of one of the roughly 2,000 bomb shelters that can be found beneath the Xuhui district alone, leaving many of the original elements intact.

To get to the club, you’ll have to make your way down a long, narrow stairway and through a dark, cave-like cement tunnel that twists and winds beneath street level. For The Shelter, the rawness and darkness of the setting is part of the appeal.

There are hundreds of thousands of bomb shelters all over China, built in the ’60s and ’70s to prepare for possible air raids from the Soviet Union. “Some projects remain as secrets,” said Tong Songyan, an official at the Xuhui district government, in an interview with Reuters.

Other businesses that have made their home in these underground passages range from the appropriate to the incongruous including a wine shop, a men’s gay bar and a men’s underwear store. The location currently inhabited by The Shelter was formerly a vegetable market, ice storage facility, massage parlor and public bath house.