From President John F. Kennedy's top secret Cold War bunker and Winston Churchill's War Rooms to Hitler's Führerbunker, the scene of his demise, and the fallout shelter Stalin would have retreated to in the event of nuclear Armageddon, the world's most (in)famous hideaways have some intriguing stories to tell. 

Click or scroll through to explore 10 of the most notable underground fortresses of all time...

John F. Kennedy was elected US president in November 1960, during one of the most strained periods of the Cold War. With the threat of nuclear annihilation growing, officials must have been in a state of total panic when they realised the new POTUS had no means of protection from a Soviet strike at his holiday home in Palm Beach, Florida, which went on to be nicknamed the Winter White House.

The former president is pictured here in 1963, visiting the property with his wife, Jackie, and children, John Jr. and Caroline.

US Naval Construction Forces took a month in December 1960 to build a top-secret 1,500-square-foot fallout bunker on nearby Peanut Island, which the president and his family could reach within five minutes, via helicopter.

The facility is accessed via a door reinforced with steel and concrete.

Covered with 12 feet of earth and layers of concrete and lead, the bunker itself is located through a 40-foot-long corrugated metal tunnel, featuring a sharp 90-degree bend to mitigate the effects of a nuclear blast.

While the installation wouldn't have survived a direct hit, it would have protected its occupants from a more distant blast, not to mention the ensuing fallout, for up to 30 days.

This is no luxurious shelter. 'The Detachment Hotel', as the bunker was no doubt half-jokingly called, wouldn't have won any stars, its spartan facilities not stretching much further than some bunkbeds, a decontamination shower, radio, desk and rocking chair for the president to relieve his chronic back pain. There wasn't even a functioning toilet installed.

10 months after the bunker was built, the Cuban Missile Crisis flared up and America was the closest it has ever come to nuclear catastrophe. Thankfully, the unthinkable was averted and JFK never had to use his Florida bunker.

After Kennedy's assassination in 1963, the bunker was abandoned. It opened to the public in the late 1990s but shut down in 2017, as the site had deteriorated. Restoration work is now underway, although it will reportedly take millions of dollars and several years before the bunker is ready to reopen. 

If JFK's holiday home in Palm Beach was the Winter White House, his family's compound in Hyannis Port, Cape Cod was certainly the Summer White House. Kennedy's parents, Joseph P. and Rose, bought a cottage on the beach in the 1920s and JFK spent his summers there along with his siblings. 

Over the years, the Massachusetts estate expanded to encompass six acres and three houses. JFK is pictured here at the Kennedy compound with his then-fiancée Jacqueline Bouvier in June 1953. 

The young politician used the family compound as a base for his 1960 presidential campaign, and he continued to holiday there after he took office the following year. As a result, it was decided that a bunker should be built nearby in case of a nuclear attack.

In 1962, a shelter was created beneath the Tom Nevers Naval Facility (pictured from above) on Nantucket island. Just 30 miles south of Cape Cod, it was close enough that Kennedy and his family could be whisked away there by helicopter or submarine in an emergency.

This rusty old door, set into a grassy hillock, is one of the few remaining hints at how important the base once was. Luckily, we're able to see inside, thanks to these haunting images captured by photographer Kit Noble. 

The shelter was built around a long passageway, which led to a gathering space, a mechanical room and a room with decontamination showers to wash off any lingering contaminants.

The bunker was erected quickly. Ideally, it would have been built deep underground, but as Nantucket is a relatively small island, digging down meant hitting water. Instead, the shelter was made up of Quonset huts; prefabricated structures that were developed during the Second World War. Earth was then piled on top of the huts and scrub was left to grow over the shelter, camouflaging the site from any prying Soviet spies. 

While that doesn't sound like much, “a shelter only needs three feet of dirt on top, and you can stay there safely until the radiation levels have come down,” bunker-building expert Bradley Garrett told the Smithsonian Magazine.

The 1,900-square-foot bunker could have housed up to 30 people in an emergency. Thankfully though, JFK never had the need to enter the bunker – let alone descend this rickety-looking ladder. Living conditions were sparse inside and the escapees would have had to use portable toilets due to the lack of permanent bathroom facilities. 

We can't imagine Jackie would have relished the prospect of bunker life, although the couple's two children would have most likely found it an adventure.

Today, the former naval site consists of a playground and two baseball pitches. The only signs of its former identity are a disused guard box and a grassy mound with a rusty door, which leads down into the abandoned bunker.

Just yards along the beach lie the large, expensive holiday homes that Nantucket is known for, complete with sprawling gardens and sparkling swimming pools – a far cry from the sparsely furnished shelter that lies beneath the ground.

June 1938 saw construction begin on an underground complex 10 feet beneath the Treasury building in London's Whitehall, to enable the British government to function during air raids.

The two-storey shelter was completed in August 1939, a week before the UK declared war on Germany. Following his appointment as prime minister, Winston Churchill visited for the first time in May 1940.

The complex has been preserved since the end of its use, following the cessation of Germany's bombing raids on London in 1945.

Upon entering the Cabinet Room, the cigar-smoking Allied leader declared: “This is the room from which I will direct the war.” And he wasn't wrong. Churchill's War Cabinet met there a total of 115 times to discuss everything from the Dunkirk evacuations to the Pearl Harbor attacks, with the space most frequented during the Blitz and V-1 flying bomb attacks.

A bomb landed near the entrance of the building in September 1940 and when it was discovered the complex would not be able to survive a direct hit, the War Rooms were reinforced with a layer of concrete five feet thick, dubbed 'the Slab'. The complex was later extended to encompass 21 rooms.

Here's the Map Room, where, together with his cabinet and generals, Churchill charted the enemy's movements.

Churchill had a love-hate relationship with the place, according to War Rooms expert Jonathan Asbury, and while he enjoyed showing off the complex to visitors, he loathed being cooped up there during bombing raids.

Despite having his very own office/bedroom, Churchill only slept in the facility for three nights in total during the war, preferring to brave it in 10 Downing Street or the residence's annexe.

Mrs Churchill also had a bedroom in the complex, though it was mainly used by the couple's daughter, Mary.

Following the Second World War, the facility was meticulously preserved and maintained before it was opened to the public in 1984, and the attraction now incorporates a museum celebrating Churchill's life.

The Battle of Britain Bunker at RAF Uxbridge, on the outskirts of London in the UK, had an equal if not even more crucial role in the war effort.

Impenetrable to the bombs of the era – unlike the War Rooms early in the conflict – the facility, which was completed mere days before the outbreak of the Second World War, was constructed 60 feet underground and protected by a huge layer of concrete.

The fortress-like installation served as the top secret nerve centre of RAF Fighter Command during the Battle of Britain, which raged from 10 July to 31 October 1940.

It housed the Operations Room, which was actually a series of interconnected rooms over two levels, accessible via a staircase of 76 steps that was heavily guarded, for obvious reasons.

A hive of activity, the Plotting Room was where members of the Women's Auxiliary Air Force (WAAF) tracked incoming Nazi raids and friendly aircraft positions on the supersized plotting table.

Meanwhile, RAF officials coordinated squadron movements with the help of a tote board and displays showing weather conditions and the location of balloon defences.

Overseen by the commander from this upper-level room, the air force personnel worked under intense pressure and had to make split-second life-or-death decisions for hours on end.

After visiting the bunker at the height of the battle in September 1940, Churchill was so moved, he uttered these immortal words: “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

The covert bunker was also instrumental in defending London during the Blitz and ensuring Allied soldiers taking part in the Normandy landings were protected from Nazi bombs.

Following the Second World War, the facility fell into disrepair. Fortunately, the Operations Room was restored to its original state in 1975 and a decade later the bunker was opened as a museum, with an above-ground visitor centre added in 2018.

Rome's splendid Villa Torlonia was the official residence of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who lived in the property with his wife and five children from 1925, paying a peppercorn rent of just one lira a year.

The family is pictured here outside the swish neoclassical palazzo in the early 1930s.

After Italy entered the Second World War in 1940 on the side of Germany, it was only a matter of time before Allied forces would start bombing Rome.

Mussolini acted tough and defiant, vowing: “I'll wait for the bombs to come to my balcony, I'll never go underground.” But in reality, Il Duce made a beeline for his bunker at the very inkling of an impending raid.

The first Villa Torlonia bunker was repurposed from a wine cellar under the estate's lake in 1940. Since it was located some distance away from the main residence, a second shelter with thicker walls and anti-gas steel doors was constructed directly under the mansion the following year.

In late 1942, work began on a state-of-the-art facility kitted out with the latest technology and mod cons.

Mussolini had seen Hitler's array of wow-factor bunkers and was green with envy. Desperate to keep up with his fellow fascist tyrant, he went for the most advanced installation money could buy.

The cross-shaped facility was built more than 20 feet under the villa's piazza and fitted with 13-foot-thick concrete walls that could resist the most potent conventional bombs.

Mussolini was ousted from power and arrested in July 1943 and the third and final Villa Torlonia bunker was never completed. The estate was eventually bought by the Municipality of Rome and turned into a museum.

The bunkers were initially opened to the public in 2006 but had to close for a time due to high radon levels. They reopened in 2014 and levels of the radioactive gas are strictly monitored to this day.

Hitler spent much of the Second World War – more than 800 days in fact – at the Wolfsschanze, or Wolf's Lair, his Eastern Front HQ, where he lay low for much of the time in a heavily fortified bunker.

Located deep in the Masurian woods in what was then East Prussia, the sinister complex was constructed under a veil of secrecy and completed in 1941, with the despot arriving not long after.

Tucked away in the forest were an astonishing 200 buildings, including barracks, offices, a cinema, power plants, a railway station, two airports and bunkers, of course, for Hitler and his inner circle.

Within the confines of the Wolf's Lair, the Nazi leadership orchestrated the Holocaust, along with brutal military campaigns like the Battle of Stalingrad, aided and abetted by over 2,000 military staff and support personnel.

As the war dragged on and the tide turned against Germany, Hitler became increasingly paranoid. Security in the complex was exceptionally tight and the Nazi leader even had a team of 15 young women tasting his food for poison. But his fears only grew, and enormous sums of money were spent upgrading the bunker, which ended up becoming a large, fortress-like structure with numerous rooms, halls and passages.

Hitler's suspicions were validated on 20 July 1944 when a group of high-ranking Wehrmacht officers, led by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, attempted to assassinate him by placing a briefcase bomb near his desk in the Wolf Lair's conference room. The briefcase was moved just before the device detonated, which saved Hitler's life.

The original plan was to plant the device in the bunker, which would almost certainly have killed him.

With the Red Army closing in, Hitler bid farewell to the Wolf's Lair in November 1944 and tons of explosives were used to demolish the complex. Yet most of the structures were only partially destroyed due to their robustness.

Now attracting hundreds of thousands of visitors a year, the development of the complex as a tourist attraction has been highly controversial.

Back in Berlin, Hitler retreated to his bunker near the Reich Chancellery on 16 January 1945, as the Allied forces were advancing on the capital and the German military was on its last legs.

Completed in 1944, the Führerbunker was built 28 feet below ground and enveloped in 13-foot-thick concrete to withstand the most destructive conventional bombs.

The hidden complex spanned 3,000 square feet and consisted of 30 small rooms, including a conference room, map room, offices and bedrooms for Hitler and his inner circle, including his partner, Eva Braun.

The bunker was decked out with fine furnishings and oil paintings, but the luxuries did little to improve the ambience, which became increasingly foreboding and claustrophobic.

This model of Hitler's study is on display in the Berlin Story Museum. It was in this room that Eva Braun and Hitler met their end on 30 April 1945. The couple was married in the bunker's map room the day before in a sombre ceremony followed by an even gloomier reception, both aware of Soviet troops drawing ever closer.

Johanna Ruf, who died in 2023 aged 94, is believed to have been the last witness of the final days in the bunker. Then a 15-year-old nurse working in a makeshift hospital adjoining the shelter, she remembered Joseph Goebbels giving her a pep talk during the final weeks of the war.

"He said, ‘Final victory is at the door’," she recalled. "But only the Russians were at the door."

Ruf had been due to receive an award from Hitler himself, but it was cancelled at short notice and she later discovered the Führer was dead. Shortly afterward, the Red Army began shelling the area around the Reich Chancellery. 

This photo shows Private First Class Richard Blust of Michigan examining the bunker. A fire had destroyed much of the room's contents, but you can still make out an ornate gilded sofa.

Following the war, the Soviets razed the Reich Chancellery buildings, but the bunker remained more or less intact. A section of the facility was demolished during the 1990s, with the rest sealed up to avoid creating a shrine to Nazism.

Today the remnants of Hitler's Führerbunker lurk beneath a nondescript residential car park.

During the Second World War, Japanese emperor Hirohito sought refuge in a concrete bunker 60 feet under the library of the sprawling Imperial Palace complex in Tokyo.

The monarch hunkered down in the shelter during the firebombing of the city in March 1945, and moved in full-time two months later, after much of the palace had been obliterated during a devastating raid.

The spacious bunker housed offices, communications and machinery rooms, toilets and bedrooms and living areas presumably for the royal family.

The most important space, though, was the conference room, where in August 1945 Hirohito recorded his famous speech announcing Japan's surrender in the Second World War.

The decision to surrender came after the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Russia declared war on Japan, spelling the nation's wholesale defeat.

After the war, Hirohito continued to live in the bunker until 1961. Thereafter, it was left to rot, with seemingly no effort made to preserve the building. In 2015, the Imperial Household Agency released the first pics of the shelter in 50 years.

As you can see from this shot of the desolate passageway, the bunker's anti-gas blast doors are covered in rust and rising damp stains the walls. Still, there's very little in the way of severe structural damage, judging by the picture. This abandoned bunker was certainly built to last.

All the same, the conference room where Hirohito recorded the fateful speech is in a much poorer state, with the floorboards and wooden wall panels disintegrating from decades of rot.

Unlike other iconic bunkers around the world, the chances of this one being restored for public viewing seem slim, and the facility will probably deteriorate further as the years go by.

In the late 1950s, a team from the US Army Corps of engineers was tasked with scouting a location for a bunker that could house members of Congress in the event of a nuclear attack. They settled on the high-end Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, which is easily accessed from Washington, DC but far enough to offer guaranteed protection from a nuclear attack on the Capitol.

With secrecy paramount, work began on the facility – later codenamed Project Greek Island – in 1957. Billed as an extension to the hotel, its true purpose was kept strictly under wraps, but workers and locals alike had their suspicions, with the colossal volume of concrete poured into the site a dead giveaway.

Completed in 1962 just in time for the Cuban Missile Crisis at a reported cost of $14 million, which is around $144 million (£114m) in today's money, the installation is a sight to behold.

Buried 720 feet underground and safeguarded by gigantic blast doors and layers of reinforced concrete, the bunker features two levels and stretches over 112,544 square feet.

Hidden in plain sight, the cavernous halls would have been used for sessions of Congress. They were integrated into the hotel, and would have been sealed off had nuclear war broken out.

The rest of the Cold War bunker is situated beyond the long entrance tunnel. This part of the facility houses the decontamination room, 18 dorms with 30 bunk beds a piece, a kitchen stocked with six months' supply of food, a 400-seat cafeteria and a TV conference room packed with broadcasting equipment that originally featured a backdrop of the Capitol building.

There's also a hospital, pharmacy and even a jail packed with straitjackets. The rumours that a mysterious government facility existed under the resort were confirmed in 1992 when The Washington Post ran an article exposing the bunker.

Once the secret was out, it was promptly declassified and decommissioned. These days it serves as a data storage centre, as well as a tourist attraction.

Almost a decade before the JFK and Congress bunkers were built, Soviet leader Josef Stalin ordered the construction of a top-secret facility he could escape to with senior government officials if Moscow were nuked.

Located within a hill within walking distance of the Kremlin and built 197 feet below ground, the 75,350-square-foot installation was eventually finished in 1956, three years after Stalin's death.

The bunker was built in a similar way to the Moscow Metro, and consists of four steel-ringed tubes, each 500 feet long, that are connected by narrow tunnels.

The main entry point was through a covert tunnel in Taganskaya metro station, but the bunker could also be accessed via a fake apartment building concealing a stairwell and a 20-foot-thick protective concrete dome.

Following its completion, the ultra-secure facility was put to use as a command base for the Soviet Union's nuclear forces.

Equipped with air purifiers, deep wells for clean drinking water and other life-support systems, as well as plenty of storage space for food, the nuclear bunker could sustain 3,000 personnel for a period of three months.

Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, is said to have hunkered down in the bunker during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Apart from that, little of note appears to have occurred in the facility, and as nuclear technology became more and more advanced, it became increasingly obsolete and insignificant.

Maintenance fell by the wayside and by the late 1980s the installation was seriously rundown.

Following the collapse of the USSR, the facility, which was originally codenamed Facility-02, was declassified. In 2006, the Russian government sold Bunker-42 to a private company, which converted the installation into a museum and entertainment complex which opened that same year.

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