The Nazis took architecture seriously, building monumental structures to flaunt what they claimed was German superiority. Today, the top 10 repurposed sites from that era have found surprising new purposes – from nightclubs to museums – proving that even the most ominous stone can be given a fresh lease on life.
Why These Top 10 Repurposed Highlights Matter
10 Flak Towers
Flak towers were colossal, castle‑like fortresses erected to shield Berlin, Hamburg and Vienna from Allied bombers. A total of eight were constructed, each wrapped in reinforced concrete walls ranging from eight to fourteen inches (20‑35 cm) thick – thick enough to shrug off direct bomb impacts, and none were destroyed during the war.
Each complex comprised two towers: a G‑type combat tower armed with eight 128 mm anti‑aircraft guns and thirty‑two 20 mm cannons, and an L‑type command tower equipped with radar and forty 20 mm guns. The 128 mm pieces could strike ground targets up to eight and a half miles away and aerial targets as high as fifty‑thousand feet, delivering an astonishing 8,000 rounds per minute.
Beyond their firepower, the towers doubled as massive bomb shelters, capable of housing ten thousand civilians. When Soviet forces stormed Berlin, more than thirty thousand people crammed inside, and the forts withstood ground assaults, forcing the Red Army to bypass them and negotiate surrender. After the war, four towers were demolished, a process that proved arduous – one required five months of planning and three demolition attempts before finally collapsing. Today, one Viennese tower hosts an aquarium, another serves the Austrian army, a third stores artwork, while in Hamburg a tower has become a nightclub and another is being transformed into a renewable‑energy plant powering a thousand homes and heating three thousand more.
9 Vogelsang National Socialist Castle
The Vogelsang National Socialist Castle, perched in the Eifel region, was erected between 1934 and 1936 as a training school to indoctrinate German youth with Nazi doctrine. Operation ceased with the outbreak of World War II in 1939, after which the site was repurposed as a military barracks during the conflict and later as a Belgian army training ground.
Today the German government has reclaimed the property and is contemplating its conversion into a museum. Unlike many other Nazi‑era structures, Vogelsang still bears visible symbols of the regime – a swastika etched into the ground, now covered by a mat, and several wall motifs that have been plastered over. The site has sparked debate: some German Jews call for its demolition, while others advocate for adaptive reuse as a senior‑citizen home, a hotel, or a public park.
8 Dachau Concentration Camp
Dachau, situated near Munich, holds the grim distinction of being the first Nazi concentration camp. Initially built to incarcerate political dissidents, it soon expanded to imprison Jews, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, homosexuals, and criminals, many of whom were subjected to forced labour and medical experiments. The infamous gate bears the phrase Arbeit Macht Frei – “work sets you free.”
Although the camp possessed its own gas chambers, they were likely never used; instead, prisoners sentenced to death were transferred to other camps for execution. Today, Dachau serves as a memorial and museum, drawing over eight hundred thousand visitors annually. At the entrance to its crematorium stands a modest Russian‑Orthodox chapel, constructed on soil imported from Russia. While the chapel is too small for public services, it remains a quiet space for private prayer.
7 Prora Holiday Resort
The Prora holiday resort sprawls across Rügen Island, a product of the Nazi “Strength Through Joy” program designed to grant the working class access to middle‑class leisure. Its eight identical block‑style buildings featured cinemas, large theatres, and ten thousand ocean‑view rooms, though a proposed swimming pool and festival hall never materialised due to the war’s outbreak.
During World II the complex housed conscripts, labourers, refugees, and prisoners. Post‑war, Soviet and East German forces occupied it. One of the eight structures was destroyed by Soviet troops; another became a hostel, two entered private hands, and the remaining four are undergoing conversion into luxury apartments. Renovation work is still in progress, with completion originally slated for 2022.
6 Wolfschanze
The Wolfschanze, or Wolf’s Lair, perched near Kętrzyn in present‑day Poland, served as Adolf Hitler’s primary command centre for most of the war. It was the very site of the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt by Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, who placed a bomb in a suitcase; the device missed its mark because the meeting was held in a building rather than a bunker, and the briefcase was shifted away from Hitler moments before detonation.
Strategically hidden by dense forests and situated beside a lake to thwart eastern assaults, the complex comprised over eighty buildings and bunkers, staffed by more than two thousand personnel, and encircled by fifty‑thousand landmines. As Soviet forces advanced in November 1944, the Nazis tried to demolish the site but only managed a partial destruction.
Today, the Wolfschanze functions as a tourist destination. The former Waffen‑SS garage has been transformed into a hotel and restaurant, while the remaining structures remain unused, maintained by the Polish Forestry Service, which hopes to lease them to anyone able to meet the £90,000 ($111,000) annual rent.
5 Reich Air Ministry
The Reich Air Ministry, completed in 1936, was a colossal office complex comprising 2,800 rooms and seven kilometres of corridors – the largest of its kind in Europe at the time. Remarkably, it escaped wartime damage and was retained by the Soviet authorities for military purposes after the conflict.
In the early 1990s, the building became home to the Treuhand committee, tasked with privatising former East German assets. The committee proved deeply unpopular, and its inaugural chairman, Detlev Rohwedder, was assassinated in 1991, prompting a renaming of the edifice to Detlev Rohwedder Haus. Today, the structure remains a popular backdrop for films set in the Nazi era and, while not generally open to the public, offers a free tour each August. It now houses Germany’s Ministry of Finance.
4 Banana Bunker
Constructed in 1942 as a 120‑room air‑raid shelter, the Banana Bunker earned its fruity moniker after the Soviets repurposed it in 1945 as a prisoner‑of‑war camp, and later East German officials turned it into a warehouse for Cuban fruit imports.
Following German reunification, the bunker was transformed into a performance hall and later into a nightclub famed as the “hardest club in the world” due to its notorious sex‑filled parties. Authorities eventually shut the venue down, leaving the space vacant until a couple purchased it in 2003 to showcase their private art collection.
3 Fichtebunker
The Fichtebunker, nestled in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district, was originally built between 1883 and 1884 as a gas‑storage facility for the city’s street‑lamp network. When electricity supplanted gas lighting at the turn of the century, the structure fell into disuse until 1940, when the Nazis converted it into a bomb shelter designed for six thousand occupants.
Renovations for its wartime role reinforced the exterior walls to 1.8 metres (six feet) and thickened the ceiling to three metres (ten feet). The bunker was divided into six levels, each containing 120 rooms. As Allied bombings intensified, the shelter swelled beyond its intended capacity, housing over thirty thousand people, including a local police station and its detainees.
After the war, the Fichtebunker served various humanitarian functions: a homeless shelter, a food‑storage depot holding “Senate reserves” for potential Soviet blockades, and eventually, in 2006, a private firm purchased it. The firm converted the chambers into upscale apartments complete with a rooftop garden, re‑branding the complex as the Circlehouse.
2 Reichssportfeld
Adolf Hitler commissioned the Reichssportfeld sports complex for the 1936 Berlin Olympics, intending the event to showcase German supremacy. Beneath the stadium, a Nazi radio network operated from a bunker during the war. After the conflict, the British military took control, renaming the venue Olympiastadion to erase its Nazi associations.
The Olympiastadion retained its sporting and cultural relevance, hosting three matches during the 1974 FIFA World Cup and the final of the 2006 World Cup after German reunification. Today, it remains a bustling sports complex, serving as the home ground for Hertha Berlin.
1 Templehof Airport
Tempelhof Airport, once Europe’s busiest airfield in the 1930s, was shuttered by the Nazis and briefly turned into a prototype concentration camp before an aborted attempt to build a replacement airport. After World II, the United States assumed control, using the site for the famed Berlin Airlift (1948‑49) that supplied West Berlin, and leasing portions in 1951.
Commercial flights ceased in October 2008 when a newer airport opened. The control tower remains under German Army jurisdiction, monitoring Berlin’s airspace. The vast airfield has been transformed into a public park, while the surrounding buildings now host a variety of institutions – the German police, a kindergarten, a dance school – and, notably, serve as a refuge for Syrian and Iraqi asylum‑seekers. In 2015, Berlin prepared to accommodate forty thousand refugees within the former airport facilities and nearby disused barracks.