A suspect has been detained after a fire destroyed Adolf Hitler’s mountain retreat, known as the Eagle’s Nest, in Bavaria, German police said.
Emergency services were alerted at about 9.15pm on Friday to flames at the Kehlsteinhaus on the Obersalzberg mountain. Firefighters found the building “completely engulfed in flames”.
No one was inside and no injuries were reported. Fire engines experienced difficulties reaching the site because of the local conditions, according to Upper Bavaria South police.
Police said investigators focused on a suspect shortly after the fire began, and one person was taken into custody. The cause of the blaze is being treated as a criminal matter.
The Eagle’s Nest was completed in 1938 at an elevation of 6,017ft and was occasionally used by Hitler as a temporary seat of government. It was spared Allied bombing during the Second World War and largely retained its original state.
The site later became a tourist attraction, with a restaurant and beer garden. Its operators describe it as one of the few undamaged monuments of the Hitler era and say it “stands for the insanity of the regime”.
