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Bassins des Lumières

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Visitors admiring large-scale digital projections of Van Gogh artworks at Les Bassins des Lumières, featuring vibrant colors and reflective floors in Bordeaux, France.

Art works by Gustav Klint, Paul Klee and other modern artists are projected onto the concrete walls of a WWII submarine base in a sensational, sound-and-light show at this digital-art gallery. Tickets, with a time-specific visiting slot, must be reserved in advance online. The colorful, dynamic "show" is all the more vivid because of the bunker's somber, deeply sobering exterior.

Hands-down the city's eeriest and most menacing sight, the mammoth hulk of a concrete submarine base (1941–43) was one of five built on the Atlantic Coast by the Germans during WWII. Designed as a bunker to protect German U-boats from aerial attack, the pens and base proved impossible to destroy by British forces during WWII and subsequently by the city, who now use the eyesore reinforced-concrete structure as a seriously cool, underground cultural center, music concert stage and clubbing venue.

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