As we wrote in the previous installment of the series, city chronicles and the pre-war press contained numerous references to Bolesławiec’s cellars, underground passages and dungeons. A significant proportion of the press articles on this subject from the 1920s and 1930s were written by Artur Shiller, the then director of the Bolesławiec museum.
A Place for Secret Weddings in the Underground
Among other things, he researched the crypt of a church located on the site of the former Evangelical cemetery (at Garncarska / Obrońców Helu streets—no longer in existence today). Legend had it that a Legnica princess rested in the church’s underground chambers with her stableman, and that both disappeared mysteriously.
Local tales often mentioned that this was a place for secret weddings. The Bolesławiec curator believed this to be an example of old legends being transferred to a somewhat younger building, located in an unusual setting—partly gloomy and partly picturesque. In the church’s underground chambers in the 1920s, there was a utility room and a tomb bearing the date 1820 and an inscription stating that the merchant J. G. Bleul, who died in 1809, and his wife rested there.
Underground Corridors Connecting the City Towers
In 1819, while an excavation was being prepared for the installation of the Kutuzov monument at its original location in the Market Square, a tunnel leading toward the “Pod Trzema Wieńcami” hotel (now the “Oleńka” restaurant) was discovered. It may have been part of an old water-supply network. However, it is remarkable that in the cellar directly beneath the hotel, clear traces of a bricked-up passage could be seen.
The existence of underground chambers in the vicinity of the defensive walls and the Kutuzov monument is also confirmed by a post-war press report. In May 1960, twelve amateur cavers followed an underground route, entering near one of the towers at Kubika Street and emerging approximately 2 km away, near the Bóbr River. The expedition participants wrote about a low-vaulted, brick-built system of cellars connecting, among other things, 15 towers of the outer ring of the defensive walls with the town hall. Taken together, all this information makes it highly probable that the underground chambers discovered by the cavers were part of the city’s former water and sewage system.
The Alchemist’s Cellar
The cellars of a tenement house at Sierpnia 80 Street presented an equally intriguing mystery. They were so extensive that they stretched beneath the surface of the street. Other sites in the city were also noteworthy: cellars near the “Szwajcarka” restaurant on the Bóbr River, which no longer exists today; passages in the railway embankment near the station; and tunnels in the vicinity of Lubańska Street.
The cellar of the home of the famous architect Gansel (19 Zgorzelecka Street) should also be mentioned. It initially served as an alchemical laboratory and was later transformed into a “museum room in miniature,” where the owner collected various valuable objects.
Gansel’s former collection included, among other things, a figure of Jupiter made by the famous sculptor Jerzy Leonard Weber, who created some of the decorative elements and sculptures adorning the entrances to the Church of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Nicholas. The figure is currently on display in the Department of the History of the City at the Museum of Ceramics in Bolesławiec.
Quiz Question
What dedication did the now-defunct church at the former Evangelical cemetery originally bear? (Obrońców Helu Street.) Please send your answers by email to: poczta@muzeum.boleslawiec.net. (Please add “Przedmioty i Anegdoty-konkurs” to the subject line.) The first person to provide the correct answer by email will receive a book prize.