Where do spies meet when they plan their secret missions? Often, they gather in buildings that look like giant fortresses that are anything but covert. Here are some of the most incredible spy palaces from around the world. At least — these are the ones we know about.
The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is one of the three main UK Intelligence Agencies. It provides signals intelligence (SIGINT) and information assurance to the government and army. “The Doughnut” is located in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.
Photo: GCHQ/Crown/Ministry of Defence
This is the gate of the building housing the British Security Service, MI5. The more than hundred years old domestic counter-intelligence and security agency is located in central London.
Photo: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP
The MI6 building on the bank of the River Thames, in London. The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), aka MI6 (Military Intelligence, Section 6) is the British intelligence agency which supplies the government with foreign intelligence.
Photo: Jeremy O’Donnell/Getty Images
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is the main intelligence-gathering agency of the United States. The New Headquarters Building (NHB) of the George Bush Center for Intelligence is in Langley, Virginia.
Photo: CIA
Photo: Carol M. Highsmith/Library of Congress
The CIA’s Original Headquarters Building.
Photo: CIA
The National Security Agency (NSA), a United States intelligence agency which monitors, collects, decodes, translates and analyses global information and data for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes. NSA headquarters building is in Fort Meade.
Photo: NSA
The Australian Secret Intelligence Service (ASIS) collects foreign intelligence, undertakes counter-intelligence activities for the government. The R.G. Casey Building, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade houses the ASIS headquarters.
Photo: Google Street View
The headquarters of the Ministry of National Security of Azerbaijan in Baku.
Photo: MNS
In the foreground: Canada’s top-secret billion-dollar spy palace, the new headquarters complex of the government’s national cryptologic agency, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE). In the background: the building of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), Canada’s primary national intelligence service.
Photo: Poppa Tango
The General Directorate for External Security (Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure, DGSE) HQ in Paris. France’s external intelligence agency provides intelligence and national security, by performing paramilitary and counterintelligence operations.
Photo: Google Street View
The Security Information Service (SIS) (Bezpečnostní informační služba, BIS), is the primary domestic national intelligence agency of the Czech Republic.
Photo: Google Street View
The new building of the Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst, BND), the foreign intelligence agency of Germany, in Berlin. Below are the radomes that contain radar antennas at an operating facility of BND, near Bad Aibling, Germany.
Photo: Adam Berry/Getty Images
Photo: Johannes Simon/Getty Images
The headquarters of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the chief intelligence agency of South Korea.
Photo: JTBC News
Photo: Google Earth
The office building of the General Intelligence and Security Service (Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst, AIVD), the secret service of the Netherlands, in Zoetermeer.
Photo: S.J. de Waard/Wikimedia Commons
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Lubyanka Square, Moscow: the main building of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) (Федеральная служба безопасности Российской Федерации, ФСБ), the principal security agency of the Russian Federation, the main successor agency to the USSR’s Committee of State Security (KGB).
Photo: Pavel Golovkin/AP
The building of the Constitution Protection Office (Alkotmányvédelmi Hivatal, AH), the Hungarian internal security intelligence agency, Budapest.
Photo: Attila Nagy/Gizmodo
Top shot: CIA Headquarters Auditorium (CIA)