Command Bunker Kemmel

Kemmelberg bunker

Useful Information

Location:	Lettingstraat 64, 8950 Dorp Heuvelland. First get your tickets at the center of Kemmel village, the rout to the bunker will be explained.
Open:	02-JAN to 14-FEB Sat 10-17, last entry 16. 15-FEB to 15-NOV Tue, Sat 10-17, last entry 16. 16-NOV to 24-DEC Sat 10-17, last entry 16. All year Thu for schools after appointment. [2018]
Fee:	Adults EUR 4, Children (8-25) EUR 1,50, Children (0-7) free, Belgian Military free. Groups (20+): Adults EUR 2,50, Teachers free, Guides free. [2018]
Classification:	Secret Bunkers
Light:	Incandescent Electric Light System
Dimension:	Ar= 2.500 m².
Guided tours:
Photography:
Accessibility:
Bibliography:
Address:	Command Bunker Kemmel, Lettingstraat 64, Heuvelland, 8951, Belgium. VVV Heuvelland, Polenlaan, 1, B-8956 Kemmel, Tel: +32-57450-455, Fax: +32-57448-999. E-mail:
As far as we know this information was accurate when it was published (see years in brackets), but may have changed since then. Please check rates and details directly with the companies in question if you need more recent info.

History

1950s	bunker built as a Command Center.
1960s	transformed into the headquarters of the Belgian Armed Forces.

Description

In the countryside of West Flanders, in a nondesript forrest near Temmel lies what some dubbed Belgium’s Area 51, because of the secrecy. However, there are no aliens and the secrecy is typical for a bunker of the Cold War era. This bunker was a cold war command center, built in the fifties at the border to France, top secret, and today open to the public.

The Command Bunker Kemmel is an external site of the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and of Military History in Bussels. It was built in the early fifties as a command centre for the air defence of five countries, the so-called Benelux countries Belgium, Luxemburg and the Netherlands, plus France and Great Britain. But almost at the same time the North-Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) created an integrated air defence system, and so the bunker was osolete before it was finished. So it was transformed into the headquarters of the Belgian Armed Forces in the sixties. It would have been used during a conflict, which actually never happened. After the Cold War it became obsolete.

The site was handed over to the museum, who preserved it perfectly, as a memento to half a century of tension between the East and the West. Beneath the original furnishing and equipment, there is an exhibition of pictures, movies, objects, uniforms and equipment from the Cold War.