The dungeon is located in the lower part of the town hall tower, which dates back to the Middle Ages. The room’s function is indicated by the words placed above the passage to the towers: Ius cole, perniciosa viris injuriu res est (Obey the law; lawlessness is a dangerous thing for man).
People awaiting the execution of a sentence—for example, at the pillory or gallows—were held in the dungeon, which is more than 5 metres deep. A prolonged stay in prison, with almost no food or drink, was also a form of punishment. Prisoners were lowered into the dungeon by ropes through a small opening in the ceiling.
The oldest city chronicles contain many references to the imprisonment of Bolesławiec townspeople in the town hall tower. This punishment was once frequently used, even for the smallest offences. Here are several examples:
- In 1436, the city council banned the owner of the Piwnica Ratuszowa restaurant from selling alcohol on Sundays during Mass. The penalty for violating the regulations was a fine of one kopa of groszy or three days in prison. A similar punishment was threatened for breaking the ban on playing cards or dice on holidays.
- In 1538, Bolesławiec introduced new fire-safety regulations, including paragraph 6, according to which every resident was required to appear during a fire with a bucket, axe, hatchet or cloth for extinguishing the flames. Onlookers who stood by idly were to be driven to help by the executioner with a stick, while those who resisted him were to be immediately thrown into the dungeon.
- In 1599, during a procession of members of the rifle brotherhood, the baker Andreas Senffdeben was injured and died later that same day. The apothecary Balerius Hellwig was accused of the offence. He was thrown into the dungeon and, after serving several weeks, had to pay the deceased man’s orphans 100 Hungarian florins, leave the city and hand the pharmacy over to his wife.
Today, it is difficult to determine precisely how long the dungeon served as a prison. (It is known that the city pillory was dismantled by decision of the city council in 1799, while the gallows were demolished in 1823.) The dungeon, once frequently used, was bricked up and forgotten for many years. It was not rediscovered until 1921. Following renovation work in 2016, it was opened to visitors to the town hall.
The hunger dungeon can be viewed through a glass opening in the floor of the town hall tower. The exhibition in the hunger dungeon was arranged by employees of the Museum of Ceramics in Bolesławiec.