Underground Moscow Museum

About museum

The museum opened in January 2024 in a decommissioned Soviet-era anti-nuclear bomb shelter. It is a hands-on museum, meaning that the vast majority of exhibits are displayed openly without cases and may be touched carefully. And, accompanied by a guide, visitors can operate many examples of original Soviet equipment.

The museum halls are divided into three zones. The "Underground Moscow" zone houses exhibits and visual materials on the city's man-made underground structures: from drainage collectors and quarries to bunkers and the metro. In the "Civil Shelter" zone, visitors can see the preserved equipment of the former 1972 bomb shelter, as well as several hundred exhibits related to the underground protection of the civilian population. The "Secret Bunker" zone contains artifacts from the most interesting and technically equipped underground sites — Soviet hardened special facilities for government communications and wartime command and control.

In total, the collection comprises more than 1,000 exhibits on underground structures and civil defense. The museum conducts active research on historical undergrounds in Moscow and other regions, and hosts popular science lectures and specialist conferences.