Podziemny kompleks Riese Włodarz, Underground military museum in Jugowice, Poland.
Podziemny kompleks Riese Włodarz is an underground museum in the Owl Mountains near Głuszyca, Poland, made up of tunnels and chambers carved directly into the granite of a hillside. The passages run across several levels and give a clear sense of the scale of the installation, with rough stone walls and low ceilings throughout.
Work on this site began in 1943 as part of Project Riese, a secret Nazi construction program aimed at building a network of underground facilities across the Owl Mountains. Thousands of concentration camp prisoners were forced to do the digging by hand, and many did not survive the construction.
The name "Włodarz" refers to the hill under which the tunnels were dug, and locals use it to distinguish this site from the other Riese locations nearby. Inside, tool marks are still visible on the granite walls, left by the prisoners who carved each passage by hand.
The underground temperature stays around 46 °F (8 °C) year-round, so a warm layer is a good idea no matter the season. Footwear with a firm sole helps on the uneven ground, and some sections can be slippery when wet.
Part of the complex is permanently flooded, and visitors can take a short boat ride through a tunnel to reach sections that cannot be accessed on foot. This makes it one of the few places in Europe where you can travel by boat inside a wartime underground structure.
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