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Some say it is a ghost town because it has not appeared on any map for decades. It is a secret place that, in the middle of the Cold War, probably hid a deadly arsenal of nuclear weapons capable of destroying the main western cities.
Others call it the Polish Chernobyl because the cloak of secrets covers its radioactive mysteries in a similar way to the disaster-stricken Ukrainian power plant.
But today, Borne Sulinovo, in the Western Pomerania region of northern Poland, is shaping up to be an exciting destination for adventure seekers looking to explore a beautiful natural area and relatively unknown Soviet hotspot with a very dark past.
Getting to this city from Szczecin, the capital of the region, involves a long journey through the predominantly rural lowlands of Poland, a site that still preserves the legacy of the Cold War. Especially the city of Drava-Pomerania, where the largest training base for NATO soldiers is located.
Last year, tens of thousands of soldiers arrived in the area using the cover provided by the lake landscape and dense forest for Defender-Europe 20, said to be the largest military exercise on the continent in a quarter century.
Head an hour east of the Drava region, where the forest becomes deeper and quieter, and you will reach the former forbidden zone of Borne Sulinovo.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, this place was accessible only to those with a special pass. Everyone else stepped aside and pretended not to know anything about the base. It was closed, hidden, and best avoided.
About 12,000 Soviet soldiers were stationed at the Borne Sulinovo military complex in the middle of the Cold War. They were part of the Group of Northern Forces present in Poland as part of the Warsaw Pact agreement between the Soviet Union and the socialist republics of the Eastern Bloc.
“The site was a massive construction site for troops and military equipment,” Wislaw Bartoszek, owner of the local museum, told CNN Travel.
“After 1945, when the Soviet Union took power, the complex became part of the Warsaw Pact military plans, which included massive exercises preparing ground and air forces for invasion from the West. It came only once, a railroad ended in the mysterious city behind electrified fences. “
People who live near Borne Sulinovo are afraid to mention it.
Even before the arrival of Soviet troops, the city was largely off-limits to outsiders. Before World War II, when the region was part of Germany, the city was known as Gross Bourne and functioned as a military base and training ground. Adolf Hitler was photographed as a guest in 1938.
In 1939, the tank troops stationed here under the command of General Heinz Guderian began the invasion of Poland, causing a global conflict. It was later used to house prisoners of war.
The Germans built most of the infrastructure that was later used by the USSR. There were barracks for troops, a railroad and a huge complex of military hospitals, which today remains abandoned, being a mystery waiting to be explored by visitors.
Security fences and barbed wire are long gone, and abandoned areas remain open to curious visitors. They wander among trees and bushes that have sprouted around the skeletons of other buildings.
Bartoszek says the area is especially popular with tourists during the summer season. He likes to tell them the story of a mysterious tunnel that passes under the hospital, connecting a room used to dissect human bodies with the railway. Researchers are still not sure what it was used for.
Today Borne Sulinovo is a residential area. After the Soviet troops left, the barracks were converted into apartments. The railroad was removed and it became a main road.
“People came to Born from other parts of Poland because the apartments were so cheap,” Bartoszek said. About 5,000 people now live here. Some of the functional buildings have been restored and refurbished over the years. A Soviet-era hospital is intact and has been renovated. Another H-shaped building in the city center is now a nursing home and rehabilitation unit for patients with multiple sclerosis.
The city still shows signs of its past. Some buildings, such as the majestic structure that housed the mess of the former officers, are now collapsing and in need of renovation. The marble walls speak of its former glory.
The authorities hope to attract investors by advertising it as a destination for tourists who want to explore the surrounding wasteland and learn about Soviet history. The pine and oak forests are full of lakes, streams, rivers and lakes and are ideal for biking and hiking during the summer season. It is also rich in wildlife, including wild boar, deer, and pheasant.
What drives this allure are stories of nuclear warheads that were once hidden in massive silos in the area, one of three nuclear weapons facilities built in western Poland.
The Soviet Union explicitly denied the storage of nuclear missiles in Poland, but archaeologists who explored the site, dug through archives of declassified satellite imagery and analyzed a scan of buildings, were convinced otherwise.
“Some of the massive silos for these warheads are located near Borne Sulinovo in the town of Brzeznica-Colonia,” Bartoszek said. During the communist era, the area was one of the best-kept secret places in Europe.
These storage chambers are now neglected and vandalized. Its graffiti-covered concrete walls are in surprisingly good condition, but there are no other facilities or furniture. The storage chambers, approximately 70 meters long and 10 meters high, are buried under a thick layer of earth and covered with grass.
Another nuclear facility, Podborsko, north of Borne Sulinovo, has been turned into a museum dedicated to the Cold War military presence.
Bartoszek explains that the missiles are planned to be used as tactical weapons targeting cities like Amsterdam and Paris. The power of the warheads varied between 0.5 and 500 kilotons.
The construction of the huge missile silos was completed in 1969, financed entirely by the communist government of the People’s Republic of Poland, according to plans drawn up by the USSR.
“Only Russian troops had access to the site,” Bartoszek said. “The whole area was excluded from Polish jurisdiction. It was de facto Russian territory.”
After the collapse of the USSR and the end of the Warsaw Pact, all maps documenting the site were destroyed. Archaeologists such as Grzegorz Kirschis, professor at the Polish Institute of History and International Relations, author of the first in-depth study of the complex, have determined the location of the warehouses.
Chiarshi relies on declassified CIA satellite images, ground-penetrating radars, and checks for signs of radiation. According to their investigation, no contamination was found.
Today, emptiness hangs over these abandoned and devastated buildings.
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