Amsterdam Bunker Offers Airlock, Parking, Mild Dread

A Cold War bunker in Amsterdam comes with an airlock, sand-filtered ventilation and its own private parking space, ensuring that even at the end of civilisation there need be no disagreement about where to leave the car.

The canal-side property on Postjeskade, in the city’s Baarsjes neighbourhood, is on sale for €295,000, about £245,000. Its 30cm-thick concrete walls were designed to protect as many as 80 people, although fitting 80 people into its 55 square metres may itself require a robust emergency plan.

The building began life as a sewage pumping station in 1940. Amid fears of nuclear war, it was converted into a fallout shelter in 1960 and was later used to store supplies for the Civil Defence.

It is arranged over three levels, two of them underground, and has electricity, water and internet access. Visitors enter through a small brick building beside the canal, then descend a concrete staircase to two shelter rooms measuring about 10 square metres and 17 square metres.

The rooms are painted white and have lighting, heavy steel doors and an airlock. There is also an emergency exit, while fresh air is supplied through a ventilation system fitted with sand filters. The internet connection offers a more modern means of monitoring whatever calamity has made the airlock necessary.

On the lowest level is the former pumping cellar, reached by climbing down a ladder through a hatch. The roughly 18-square-metre room remains in rough condition, with some of its original pipe fittings still visible. Estate agent Property Noord observed, with admirable restraint: “For other use, adjustments will be necessary.”

The bunker occupies a 76-square-metre canal-side plot and includes the private parking space. Its ground lease has already been paid until January 31, 2098, providing useful long-term certainty in a property otherwise built around the possibility of sudden global uncertainty.

The site last changed hands for €15,000 in 2011. It returned to the market in 2022 with an asking price of €1.1 million but failed to attract a buyer. Property Noord said that at the time it was “overgrown with ivy, inaccessible to most buyers”.

That problem has since been tackled. The listing says: “The ivy is gone, and the cellar has been renovated and furnished in the style of the 1960s. Local residents are seeing for the first time what stood there all those years.” It adds: “Now it is for sale again, for a fraction of the asking price from back then.”

What the eventual owner may legally do with it remains uncertain. Hero Panman, co-owner of Property Noord, said the main obstacle was zoning: municipal planning documents designate the site for “traffic” purposes.

The agent said it had already heard from 20 interested parties and that municipal officials were willing to discuss the zoning, with residential use still a possibility. The bunker is being sold by tender, with bids due by 5pm on November 6. The sellers hope to complete the sale by December 24, potentially providing one buyer with a particularly secure place to spend Christmas.