Many towns in Lower Silesia conceal passages, dungeons and underground corridors beneath the surface. Some of them certainly date back to the Middle Ages.
Bolesławiec was no exception. In 1926, Artur Schiller, the curator of the Bolesławiec museum, took an interest in the subject. In one of his articles, he wrote: "(…) among the residents of Bolesławiec, one can hear many mysterious stories. The issue of underground passages in our town is complicated by the existence of the former water-supply and sewage system, whose construction began as early as the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries.”
Schiller undertook an investigation of accounts concerning what lies beneath Bolesławiec—dungeons, tunnels, secret passages and mysterious cellars. Although most of these structures no longer exist or their exact locations cannot be determined, it is worth becoming familiar with the information available on the subject from almost 90 years ago, even if much of it consists only of hypotheses or legends.
The former castle (which no longer exists and whose site is now Plac Zamkowy) was connected to the town by an underground tunnel. This is indicated by discoveries made in 1898, when fragments of a vaulted passage were found during construction work on the house at 6 Plac Zamkowy. After the work was completed, the tunnel entrance was bricked up at the owner’s request.
Tunnels also extended from the town hall’s underground areas, probably leading beyond the town walls. In 1921, a 6-metre-deep dungeon was discovered beneath the town hall tower; it had originally served as a prison. This is indicated by an inscription placed in the northern passage of the town hall: “Jus cole, perniciosa viris iniuria est”—observe the law; injustice is ruinous. At the beginning of the 16th century, this was where Mayor Anshelmus Scholz was imprisoned after opposing the town authorities following his resignation. It was a very high-profile case for the time, as Scholz had been imprisoned illegally, with even royal safe-conducts being disregarded. The town council’s actions led Scholz’s sons to wage a “private war,” causing the town considerable damage. Today, while walking through the corridors of the town hall’s northern passage, one can see the trapdoor leading to the former prison.
The legends of the Dominican monastery have also always fired the imagination of Bolesławiec’s residents. Curator Schiller found confirmation of some of these mysterious tales in the municipal archive materials. A record from 1812 contains a description of work carried out in a garden in the area between the town walls, between the Lower Gate and the monastery.
At that time, an opening was made in the tower standing there, illuminating the dungeon below. A skeleton, iron chains, a candlestick and a spoon were found in the dungeon. This led to a renewed flourishing among the townspeople of legends about mysterious underground passages leading from the monastery.
This was not the only interesting reference contained in the aforementioned record. It also stated that during times of religious unrest, niches were often dug in the cellars of burghers’ houses for quick burials. It went on to describe the underground areas of the house on Zgorzelecka Street, where, in the 15th century, one of the townspeople secretly established a place for holding religious services. According to accounts from the residents of the time, there was an old wooden altar and a concealed entrance to a dungeon. In the 1920s, Curator Schiller and a former resident of the house explored the cellars, discovering a bricked-up, quadrangular entrance to a tunnel.
We will return to the subject of Bolesławiec’s underground passages in the next instalment of the “Objects and Anecdotes” series.
(commissioned information: Museum of Ceramics)