The complex as a whole started as an underground limestone quarry in a wine-growing area of present-day Kőbánya in the Middle Ages.

During the Second World War, the dimensions of the complex enabled it to be used as a covert aircraft engine assembly plant and a civilian hideout.

The nature of limestone makes the spaces of the complex moist and moldy, and some parts are actually heavily flooded by groundwater.

The tunnel system originated as an underground limestone quarry in an area which was known as Kőér (roughly "Stone Vein") in present-day Kőbánya.

The Kőér quarry's activity have risen significantly in the early 17th century,[8]: 8 [7]: 8 [3] and then experienced even more heightened output in the 19th century,[6]: 1  as it provided limestone for the construction (or renovation) of some of the most prominent buildings in present-day Budapest; The quarry served as a material source for many of the buildings of Pest which were built after the devastating flood of 1834,[6]: 1  as well as for many of the villas of Andrássy Avenue.

[12] Péter Schmiedt was the first[5] to establish his Kőbánya Beer House Company (Kőbányai Serház Társaság) on the premises in 1844.

[6]: 2  The company continued to use some of the underground spaces as fermentation cellars, and drilled deep wells to exploit the limestone-filtered, clean groundwater under the quarry tunnels for beer production.

The Austrian businessman and brewer Anton Dreher Sr. (known in Hungary as Antal Dréher) bought Schmiedt's company and its related assets in 1862[6]: 2 [1] to eliminate competition and to expand his Austrian brewery company, Klein-Schwechat Brewing House (Klein-Schwechater Brauhaus), and continued to use portions of the underground spaces as cellars.

In the following years, Dreher's son, Anton Jr. bought up and integrated the neighboring rival breweries that were also settled in the vicinity.

The Dreher family's companies were the most significant developer and producer of pale lager beer up until World War I.

During the Second World War, due to fears of Allied bombing campaigns, parts of the complex were used as a covert aircraft engine assembly plant[12][6]: 2 [1][2] most likely by the Danubian Aircraft Factory (Dunai Repülőgépgyár), the enterprise responsible for the domestic license production of the Messerschmitt Me 210C heavy fighter (designated as Me 210Ca-1 in the Luftwaffe), which were to be either delivered to or fully assembled in Germany.

The workers were able to produce more than 200 engines until production was relocated into Germany as Red Army troops came close to Budapest.

[12][9] At least one specific hall, which was referred to as a "chapel" (kápolna) by the miners, served as a place of worship to hold Sunday masses during the siege.

Between the 1950s and the early 1970s the mining tunnels and the central mine courtyards (mélyudvar) of the Óhegy area were filled with construction debris, meters of communal waste, and earth to rehabilitate land, which then gave place to the Hungarian-Soviet Friendship Park, today's Óhegy Park [hu].

[13] The problem was finally mitigated in 2012 (involving the help of a GHH LF 4.1 mine front loader), costing the district government 90 million forints (400,000 US dollars), and on 5 December 2012 the fence was removed and the area was restored to the public.

[5] The most prominent human activity in the past decades within the tunnel complex was the commercial growing of edible mushrooms in some sections, generally in corridors and smaller halls.

In 2012, the complex was used as testing grounds for the capabilities of the portable REGARD Muontomograph by a group of Hungarian scientists and engineers from Eötvös Loránd University, the Wigner Research Center for Physics, and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics, to demonstrate the use of muon tomography in geophysical surveying of underground structures.

[20] In 2015, the record-holder Austrian freediver Christian Redl dived in the flooded parts of the complex for a GoPro promotional video.

The project anticipates that the premises would contain a musical stage, an event hall, galleries, studios, clubs, coffee houses, restaurants, a beer museum, a mass transit stop, and hotels among other things.

[22][6]: 3  The project was a part of the EU's brownfield rehabilitation program MISTER (Military and Industrial SiTEs Reuse) as well as the Interreg III B-level CADSES (Central European–Adriatic–Danubian–South-Eastern European Space) cooperation, but did not gather enough interest from potential investors.

[23][24] The tunnel system was originally a slope mine with gentle inclinations, which used the room and pillar method for the limestone production.

[6]: 1 [1][11] The complex has multiple levels within,[23] and (due to cave-ins, tunnel closures and floodings, along with the poor mining documentation) its full extent is not fully surveyed or mapped.

However, one of the flooded machinery halls of the Dreher Brewery reaches into a depth of roughly 44 m (144 ft),[4] but it is unclear if it could be considered as part of the tunnel complex.

[6]: 1  The cellar floor area under the Dreher premises is around 40,000–45,000 m2 (430,000–480,000 sq ft),[32][5] with a combined passage length of 6 km (3.7 mi).

[11] The water temperature is around 10–13 °C (50–55 °F),[26][36][28][30] or according to other sources,13–14 °C (55–57 °F),[33] or 6–8 °C (43–46 °F),[11] and it is generally very clean and clear (aside from small floating debris from decaying equipment and considerable silt deposits in some halls), providing good visibility for navigating around with flashlights.