Sziklakórház Atombunker Múzeum, Budapest

The Hospital in the Rock Nuclear Bunker Museum is a former emergency hospital carved into the caverns beneath Buda Castle. Its surgical unit opened in 1944, after construction that began in 1939, and it treated civilians as well as soldiers wounded during the siege of Budapest. The facility could serve anyone, without discrimination by gender, race, religion, or ethnicity.

The scale of the crisis is striking: a hospital designed for 60–70 patients eventually held 600 wounded soldiers. Supplies ran dangerously short, so staff sterilized materials recovered from the dead, and horses were eventually slaughtered for food. The hospital’s own generators kept X-ray work possible when other hospitals could no longer manage it.

After the war, the site was used during the 1956 uprising and later transformed into a secret nuclear shelter. Between 1958 and 1962, workers added a 25 m3 water tank, air treatment, poison-gas filtration, and two Ganz diesel engines. The shelter was designed to keep 200 doctors and nurses prepared for casualties, with the medical team expected to endure for 72 hours following a chemical or nuclear strike. Today, wax figures recreate medical treatment and daily life during the siege, alongside civil-defence equipment and anti-radiation kits.