Where the Adriatic and Ionian seas meet in between Italy and Albania, a ghostly island with a legacy of chemical warfare awaits its day in the guidebooks.
Sazan Island is a half-hour boat ride from mainland Albania. But with a mysterious history as home to a Soviet military base and chemical weapons facility, the empty island has maintained an inhospitable air.
Sazan, which was once known as Saseno, was outfitted to withstand a nuclear attack. Now it will be tasked with handling the tourists Albania’s president announced this week that he hopes to attract.
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Today, it’s covered in tunnels and trenches from its time as a military base meant to survive a nuclear bomb in the event of a Western attack. The buildings are gutted and crumbling.
The hills are dotted with single-occupancy bunkers—some 3,600 of them—many still outfitted with beds and chairs. But the buildings are little more than shells. Some of them—the aluminum and fuel storerooms—were looted in the late ‘90s.
For more than half a century, Sazan has been an island enigma, its secretive military operations fascinating the public during the Cold War.
Before that—in the 1910s—Italy took possession of the island in a deal that divided Albania between Greece and Italy. It was used by the Italian army as a base, until the communists came to dock on Sazan.
According to The Cold War: A History, the Soviet Union canceled Albania’s debt in exchange for the use of Sazan, not long after Albania regained control of the island in 1947.
British and American governments began been keeping a close eye on Soviet activities on the island. In 1951, the U.S. State Department wrote that “Saseno Island was a minor Italian submarine base and there have been recurrent but unconfirmed rumors in the postwar years of Soviet efforts to reconstruct these facilities.”
Harpers in 1949 called it “Russia’s secret Gibraltar.”
The next year, there were reports of mysterious East German ships bound for the island. In 1957, a small newspaper item in the American press noted that naval experts were watching as Soviet vessels arrived in Albania’s ports, and Russia turned the country into “a vast sea and air base to counter the power of the United States Sixth fleet in the eastern Mediterranean.”
According to one correspondent at the time, Sazan had become “a fortress.”
A year later, reports said there were airfields, along with hangars for submarines and airplanes underground.
“Russian technicians boast they have made the island, and other installations in the area, bomb-proof and even safe from atomic attack,” a report from the World Press Service wrote.
In 1961, a reporter dubbed it “a highly secret and important Soviet submarine base,” though recent tensions had forced the USSR to remove some of its ships from the island.
Sazan was relinquished that year when the USSR and Albania cut ties. The island had reportedly been outfitted with radar installations on its mountain-tops and missiles were awaiting deployment in case of attack.
Once home to 3,000 troops, Sazan Island was declared a protected park in 2010 and is now manned by just two sailors. Their naval base is charged with watching the contraband trade between Italy and Albania.
Virtually closed to civilian visitors, it has since been used as a training ground for military operations.
In 2013, an elite team of British Royal Marines launched “Exercise Albanian Lion,” a four-day attack on the island, leading to the destruction of two further buildings.
The exercise, which involved 3,000 troops, was a success, according to the British government’s press release, but the island’s shady legacy caught up with the participants.
It’s unclear whether the Soviets really built a chemical and biological weapons plant on Sazan, but it’s a widely-repeated legend.
Shortly after returning to the UK, at least 30 marines became seriously ill, and some theorized that the ailment came from mustard gas.
The Royal Navy announced, a year later, that the most likely cause was a poisonous plant that seeps out toxic sap. It’s known to irritate skin and eyes. “At least one Marine was gasping for breath when the atmosphere triggered a respiratory problem. We are sure it was mustard gas,” a soldier told The Daily Mail.
Albanian officials are hoping to move past associations with poison gases and Soviet submarines.
Instead, they’d like to cash in on the beach, cliff faces, and ecosystem of the island starting this summer. So far, it’s unclear which offers they’re entertaining, but approaches from Las Vegas casino magnates have been refused. First, there’s a lot of weeding to do.
