Under the Jalta hotel, a Cold War museum has opened

Prague - A Cold War Museum has opened under the Jalta Hotel on Prague's Wenceslas Square. The hotel management, in collaboration with the civic association Czechoslovak Armed Forces, established it in a former shelter for prominent individuals. It was designed to withstand the impact of a nuclear explosion. The museum was unveiled by the hotel management on the occasion of the 55th anniversary of the hotel's establishment.
    The anti-nuclear shelter was built for about 150 people. Its residents had access to an emergency generator, a special water tank across two floors, and it was equipped with a small operating room.
    Several rooms are accessible to the public, which served as facilities for the shelter's staff and simultaneously for members of the Czechoslovak secret services. Beneath one of the most significant hotels in Prague during the second half of the 20th century, there was a listening device installed for monitoring the phone calls of hotel guests. Agents thus had oversight of calls made by employees of the embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, which was located in the hotel during the 1970s.
    The equipment of the shelter has not survived; members of the civic association have, therefore, furnished the museum from their collections. Visitors can view, for example, the border guard room, read information about the Iron Curtain, inspect a small operating room, or see a teletype machine and listening devices.
    The shelter had several escape routes. One leads a few meters from the hotel to Wenceslas Square, while another leads to a neighboring building. However, the corridor is bricked up, so it is unclear exactly where it leads, said one of the guides.
    The museum is open in even weeks on Tuesday and Thursday and in odd weeks on Monday and Wednesday, always from 5:00 PM to 8:00 PM. Admission is 75 crowns, and hotel guests pay nothing.
    The hotel was built 55 years ago at the site of a gap that arose from a building destroyed in May 1945. The design was created by architect Antonín Tenzer. In the event of a war conflict, the hotel was intended to serve as a command center for the Warsaw Pact. For this reason, an anti-nuclear shelter was built in the basement. The construction of both the hotel and the shelter was very expensive; it would reportedly cost several hundred million crowns in today's prices. The shelter was removed from the network of secret civil defense shelters only in 1998, after which it became the property of the private hotel.