Seventy years old and it appears in better shape than many more recently made bomb shelters I’ve seen.

ROME (AP) — A Roman villa’s wine cellar, which was converted into an air raid shelter for Benito Mussolini and the Italian dictator’s family, is opening its anti-gas, double steel doors to tourists.

The shelter was quickly constructed in 1940, after the outbreak of World War II, in what had once been the wine cellar of a noble family who lived there before Mussolini took up residence during his Fascist rule.

Visitors at a preview Saturday saw the iron-rung ladder used for emergency exits and a rusting contraption to purify air in case of a gas attack. A label on the apparatus was dated November 1940 in Roman numerals, in keeping with Mussolini’s style of evoking the ancient Roman empire’s glory days as inspiration for his own rule.

I enjoy seeing these older shelters when they turn up. Part of the attraction is that many of them were quite effective but were built, necessarily, using materials and techniques of the time. With modern techniques, materials, and equipment you could build something better, faster, and probably cheaper. But if all you have is 1930’s technology you can still build something like that. I find that a bit reassuring.