Castle museum Linz - Underground city entrance

About 15 years after the opening of the southern wing of the castle museum in Linz, Martin Emmerer complements his competition winning museum design of the year 2006 with an additional underground city access through an historic air protection tunnel.

The underground extension of the existing passenger lift of the southern wing down to the level of the Tummelplatz and the adaption of an existing almost 70 metres long brightly lit historic tunnel provides a new barrier-free access from the historic old town of Linz directly into the foyer of the south wing.
In addition to the technical complexity of an underground lift extension through the rock of the mountain, the architectural challenge was to develop the appropriate architectural design elements in a suitable design language in order to sensitively transform the sobriety of the historic air-raid shelter tunnel into a spatially exciting and friendly new barrier-free access option to the castle museum. The work in the tunnel was accompanied by archaeologists of the state museum and the federal monuments office. The use of the historic portal situation at Tummelplatz continues the central idea of the symbiotic connection of old and new.