There are a surprising number of places in the world that we're not allowed to visit, including the deadly Snake Island, the secret Coca-Cola recipe vault, India's North Sentinel Island, and Turkey's Ploutonion at Hierapolis, aka the 'Gate to Hell.' One of the most famous is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which has been designed to save the world in case of an apocalypse.
Serving as a backup facility for the world's crop diversity, the Global Seed Vault sits on the Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is off-limits to the general public, and can only be visited six times a year.
A three-way agreement between the Norwegian government, the Crop Trust, and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center (NordGen) hopes to preserve the world's seed food supply against the likes of mismanagement, war, disease, and natural disasters.
After the Nordic Gene Bank (now NordGen) started storing frozen seeds in an abandoned coal mine in 1984, the Norwegian government footed the $8.8 million construction cost ahead of its opening in 2008. It came in response to the Aleppo seed bank being destroyed in the Syrian civil war.
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The number of samples added goes up each year, and in 2025, the grand total sits at 1,331,458 - representing over 130,000 years of agricultural history.
The Svalbard Global Seed Vault is 130 meters above sea level and boasts six lines of security. It's kept at -18⁰C, with vault manager Simon Jeppson explaining it should sustain itself for 4,000 years. While the vault sounds like a pretty great place to wait out the apocalypse, the importance of preserving the world's crops means we aren't allowed inside.
You're out of luck if you're in the Spitsbergen area and fancy visiting the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, although you can technically take a peek inside.
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The official Svalbard Global Seed Vault site explains that despite human access being tightly controlled to those depositing seeds or occasionally taking them out, a virtual tour gives us a rare insight.
A description explains: "Through this virtual tour you can enter the Seed Vault and see what it looks like inside the most important room in the world. Don’t forget to turn around or look up at the ceiling or down at the floor. And best of all – you don’t have to freeze in -18 C degrees!"
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As well as not having to take a long trip to this remote part of Norway, it's good that we can also tour the facility from the comfort of our armchairs.
Heading inside, there's a long tunnel and some pretty intimidating doors before we reach the Aurora Borealis Room and go on into 'The Cathedral'. There are three seed chambers, with each being made up of generic shelves and the third one being relatively empty for future storage.
Even though the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is designed to outlast any of us reading this article, disaster struck in 2017 when rising temperatures due to global warming caused the permafrost to melt and its entrance to flood. No seeds were lost, but it raised questions about whether the Svalbard Global Seed Vault is as secure as we first thought.
Speaking to The Guardian, the Norwegian government's Hege Njaa Aschim explained, "It was supposed to [operate] without the help of humans, but now we are watching the seed vault 24 hours a day.
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"We must see what we can do to minimise all the risks and make sure the seed bank can take care of itself."