Urania is a vast underground parking garage in the heart of Zurich that doubles as a bunker that can accommodate up to 11,000 people in case of an emergency. Photo / Samantha Aeschbach via The Washington Post
Amid the charming, cobbled streets and medieval buildings in Zurich’s old town, there is one site that never ceases to amaze guests of tour guide Samantha Aeschbach.
Urania, a cavernous underground space spanning seven stories, is a parking garage.
But it’s also a modern military fortress hiding in plain sight, the owner of the Zurich Insider tour company tells her guests.
The garage doubles as one of the largest public shelters in Switzerland and could accommodate 11,000 people in case of an emergency, with drinking water, emergency power generators, gas filters, and a command system.
“To come across it spontaneously, you really have to be looking,” Aeschbach said in an interview.
She added that it often leads to a flurry of questions from her guests - who mainly come from the Americas and other European nations - about Switzerland’s military history and who would be able to use the bunker in an emergency.
“Everybody’s very surprised, and then they want to know a little bit more, and we get off track‚” she said, laughing.
Being prepared is something of a national sport in Switzerland, where service in the military or civil defence force is mandatory.
The country is pitted with a network of about 370,000 personal shelters ensuring a secretly assigned place for each of its nearly 9 million residents.
Separate spaces are designated for civil protection forces and the military.
Now, the famously neutral country is spending hundreds of millions overhauling its vast network of personal shelters and civil protection sites in light of the “changing global security situation”.
In 2026, a new civil protection ordinance will come into effect that will see 200 larger bunkers modernised at a total cost of US$276 million ($480m) over 15 years.
The fee property developers must pay to local authorities to fund public shelters will also rise, from about US$1000 to more than US$1700 per person.
Separately, work is under way across Switzerland’s regional authorities, known as cantons, to revamp ageing ventilation and filtration systems on existing bunkers reaching the end of their 40-year life cycle.
A US$1.2 billion fund is available for this over the next 15 years, and the time frame can be expediated if necessary, a Swiss government spokesperson said.
The Army is also calling for ideas on how existing military fortifications could be modernised into “hard-to-attack defence nodes”, inviting companies and start-ups to submit their ideas this month.
The historic revamp comes against the backdrop of Russia’s war in Ukraine, which has kick-started a new era of uneasy militarisation in Europe.
Countries such as Denmark, Sweden, Finland, France and the United Kingdom have been overhauling conscription rules, bolstering defence spending, testing emergency warning systems, revamping public information campaigns and urging citizens to maintain a store of essential supplies.
Though Switzerland has maintained political neutrality for centuries, the right to a personal shelter is enshrined in the Federal Law for Civil Protection, introduced in 1963.
Silvia Berger Ziauddin, a professor of Swiss and contemporary history at the University of Bern, said the bunker mentality is part of Switzerland’s “national DNA”.
It has evolved from the late-1800s defensive strategy of the National Redoubt - where bunkers were built in the Swiss mountains to protect against foreign invaders - to the nuclear threats of the Cold War.
A combination of political will and external factors has helped the network flourish, she said.
In the years since, many larger bunkers have been sold off by the army, with some given fascinating second lives as museums, mushroom farms, or for perfectly ageing cheese.
The requirement to build personal shelters was nearly scrapped in 2011 but given fresh impetus by the Fukushima earthquake that year in Japan, followed by the war in Ukraine.
Now authorities are reimagining the existing network for a “poly-crisis” situation, where multiple threats appear at once, Berger Ziauddin said, as well as a “renewed focus on war scenarios”.
Daniel Jordi, head of the Civil Protection and Training Division at Switzerland’s Department of Defence, Civil Protection and Sport, said while most personal shelters in the country are close to people’s homes, his team is now thinking about how to protect people outside the home.
“The economy still has to work during war. That’s what you see in all conflicts nowadays,” he said in a phone interview.
“Some people do have to go to work. And if you’re doing your work in a big city and there’s an air raid, as you see it in Kyiv at the moment, you have to have a certain protection for those people.”
Keeping schools running and avoiding “more traumas than necessary for the young generation” is also under consideration, Jordi said.
Swiss authorities are looking at what other countries do, and taking notes from places such as Ukraine, Finland, and Israel, Jordi said. “We have to define: Against what do we want to protect?”
At an estimated cost of US$1800 per person over a 60-year period, the shelters provide “good insurance”, Jordi said.
“It’s a huge infrastructure, but in the end it’s cheaper than any other measures you could take to protect your population.”
Of the 370,000 bunkers in Switzerland, many are in apartment blocks, with another 1700 facilities earmarked for command posts and field hospitals, according to the Swiss Government.
They can be used casually for storage but are built according to rigorous specifications.
The outer shell is made from reinforced concrete with blast doors, ventilation systems, emergency exits and air locks designed to withstand nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Though they range in size, they must have 1sq m of floor space and a volume of 2.5cu m per occupant.
One dry toilet for every 30 occupants is required - although some bunkers are equipped with flushable toilets and showers.
The allocation of places remains a closely guarded secret. Major Frank Armour, staff officer of the Civil Protection force in Vaud canton, said during an emergency the Government would order “pre-assignment” of places, and local authorities would have to make shelters operational within five days.
Details will only be communicated to the public under government orders.
“Definitely when the war in Ukraine began, a lot of people started to ask about the shelters,” Armour said, with questions including where bunkers were, how places are assigned and whether there would be enough space.
Since then things have calmed down, but the network provides a “sense of reassurance”, he said.
Few can match the Swiss commitment to emergency preparation, but elsewhere in the world many try, with prepping for Doomsday, or even just “Tuesday” - prepper shorthand for the dullest day of the week - becoming increasingly mainstream.
Berger Ziauddin said Swiss companies have been at the forefront of a “commercialised security-scape” since the 1960s when Swiss products and expertise were exported, burnishing the country’s reputation for quality and technical-know how.
Bunker Swiss chief executive Xavier Brun, who sells custom bunkers, kit sets and old military installations to clients in Switzerland and around the world, said the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East have led to a spike in demand for those who want the privacy and security of a custom bunker.
“A lot of people have questions, a lot of people are afraid,” Brun said.
He is now looking for a European distributor to help sell bunker kits - which cost roughly US$46,000 to US$93,000, or around half the cost of a custom bunker.
In the United States there is demand for bunkers which range from around US$20,000 to a basic version to high-end designs that can cost up to US$1 million, according to Ron Hubbard, the Texas-based chief executive of Atlas Survival Shelters.
He said while US bunkers feature “off the hook” details like secret passages, theatres and wine-tasting rooms compared to the more pragmatic Swiss versions, he would like to see the US adopt more of a Swiss approach when it comes to civil defence, with a shelter or safe room in every home and even blast drills for schoolchildren.
“One of my goals is hopefully that I could get this new [Trump] Administration to maybe bring back civil defence to America,” he said.
For Erich Breitenmoser, owner of one of Switzerland’s largest private bunkers, the nation’s modernisation effort is “common sense”.
The former chiropractor and consultant, who paid a “seven-figure sum” for Furggels Fortress in 2019, said the bunker built in 1939 to defend against Hitler’s army has given him both the satisfaction of owning a piece of Swiss history and peace of mind.
“Noah didn’t build the ark during the flood, he built the ark before the flood,” he said. “You might never need it, but if you do need it, you’re glad you have it.”
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