Military citadels under London

Pindar can house a maximum of 400 personnel and provides protection against conventional bombing, sabotage, biological and chemical attack, flooding, and the effects of blast, radiation, and the electromagnetic pulse from "all but a direct hit or very near miss" by nuclear weapons.

[6] When answering written questions about Pindar, which included a question on the extent of lift and staircase access to the bunker and on whether there was any connection to transport systems, then-Armed Forces Minister Jeremy Hanley would say only that there were "sufficient means of access and egress" and denied that the bunker was connected to any transport system; he also said that there were means of leaving Pindar should the MOD Main Building collapse on top of it, but did not state the details of these.

[12][13] The photographs, which were published as The Last Things in 2008[10] as well as being exhibited in 2008[8][14] and in 2009,[15] show that the facility is stocked with items ranging from CBRN equipment to personal hygiene products.

[11][10][16] The bunker is named after the ancient Greek poet Pindar whose house was the only one left standing in Thebes following the city's destruction in 335 BC.

[18] Its brutal functionality speaks of a very practical purpose; in the event of a German invasion, it was intended that the building would become a fortress, with loopholed firing positions provided to fend off attackers.

In the same debate, a suggestion by MP John Tilney that a variety of plants be used was rejected by the minister on the grounds that it would "make it like an old-world tea garden".

The only central London citadel currently open to the public is the Cabinet War Rooms, located in Horse Guards Road in the basement of what is now HM Treasury.

They originally covered three acres (1.2 hectares) and housed a staff of up to 528 people, with facilities including a canteen, hospital, shooting range and dormitories.

There is a small telephone room (disguised as a toilet) down the corridor that provided a direct line to the White House in Washington DC, via a special scrambler in an annexe basement of Selfridges department store in Oxford Street.

[21] A detailed description, with photographs, was published just after the war in the January 1946 edition of The Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal.

The site provided protected accommodation for the lines and terminal equipment serving the most important government departments, civil and military, to ensure the command and control of the war could continue despite heavy bombing of London.

At the southern end, an 8 ft (2.4 m) diameter extension (Scheme 2845A) connects to a shaft under Court 6 of the Treasury Building: this provided the protected route from the Cabinet War Room.

Spur tunnels, 5 ft (1.5 m) in diameter, were built to provide protected cable routes to the major service buildings either side of Whitehall.

[25] Those access shafts that could be readily entered by unauthorised individuals[nb 1] were promptly sealed up following the publication of Campbell's article.