About the Underground Routes of Szczecin
Address
Kolumba 2, Szczecin 70-035 Polska
Main Railway Station SZCZECIN GŁÓWNY station, platform 1; entrance through a glass shelter with stairs down.
ATMs and toilets in the station lobby.
Call
+48 605 433 433
Write email in English
info@schron.szczecin.pl
Opening hours
Please look at Homepage
About us
And now a few words about the history of the place:
Under the main railway station in Szczecin and partly inside a nearby slope is hidden the largest non-military shelter in Poland. This anti-aircraft shelter was built during the World War II.
To finish it, Germans used 18th century corridors. It served to protect Stettin’s civilian population until the end of the war, then it was called Stettin HBF-Kirchplatz.
Structure of Szczecin’s Underground Routes, Izabela Rosa-Grygorowicz
After the WWII the shelter was converted into a nuclear one.
During the air raids it was a shelter for approx. 5000 people. It is located at a depth of 5 levels. The walls and ceiling are made of 3 meters of reinforced concrete. The total Surface area of the shelter is about 3 000 m2. The history of well-known to locals concrete ship „Ulrich Finsterwalder” – a hull located on Dąbie lake – is connected to the bunker.
All evidence points to the fact that the German engineer Ulrich Finsterwalder, who was chairing a committee for building concreto ships during WWII, also designed a staircase leading 18 m underground to the bunker.
Amongst the tourists from Poland and abroad, the shelter is also visited by Polish national TV stations (TVN, TVP, Polsat) and foreign television crews (BBC, Channel 4, ZDF and more), as well as independent film and TV producers such as Jurek Owsiak.
Movie
Szczecin Underground Routes was also used as a film set for the movie „The Great Escape to the North”, a story about further lives of the protagonists from „The Great Escape” movie from 1963.
Movie
“The Great Escape to the North”
Watch the movie for free. Visit the place where it was filmed.
Synopsis:
At the night of 24 th March 1944, a group of prisoners escapes through the tunnel from the best-guarded prison of the Third Reich – Stalag Luft III in Żagań. Two Norwegian pilots, Per Bergsland and Jens Müller decide that the harbour city Stettin (Szczecin) is their gateway to freedom.
They experience a bomb ride and are directed to the railway station’s shelter. After the bomb ride they search for Swedish sailors who would help them get away to the neutral Sweden.
They live through an intense two days. Stettin (Szczecin) is also visited by an Englishman Harry Day and a Pole Paweł Tobolski, wearing a Luftwaffe uniform. Their only chance is the Pole’s sister, who lives in Stettin.
„The Great Escape to the North” is a fictionalized account of real events, brought to life with excellent acting, keeping audience on the edge of their seats from the very start. It presents the heroic efforts of RAF pilots, inspired by their longing for freedom.
One of the rooms of the Szczecin Underground Routes
is a preserved film set from the movie „The Great Escape to the North”.
