Caves

Opatów Underground Route

The Opatów Underground is a complex of old merchant cellars and town storage rooms beneath the market-square townhouses, turned into a tourist route opened in 1984. The route runs for about 500 metres on three levels beneath the market square, streets and townhouses.

Why the town went underground

Opatów stood at the crossing of trade routes, and the circuit of the town walls left no room to build storeys outwards. Merchants and craftsmen began to carve cellars instead, and a chaotic web of corridors grew beneath the town. They were most likely started in the thirteenth century, and the oldest details visible on the route date from the fifteenth century.

Saving the old town and opening the route

The underground returned to attention when the historic townhouses began to crack and decay. Exploration in the 1960s and 1970s was carried out by the Kraków Cave Exploration Club under engineer Stanisław Nowosielski, and from 1971 rescue and securing works were supervised by specialists of the AGH University of Science and Technology together with miners from Bytom. The route passes more than a dozen chambers with names such as Żmigród, Small Loess, Shooting Range, Partisan or Merchant, and includes an exhibition about the town and the Opatów land.

Practical

Entrance and exit are at the same point, at Obrońców Pokoju Square 18. The site is open all year; visits take place in guided groups, with time for the exhibitions included in the ticket. Inside the temperature stays at about 7–10°C, so bring a layer. Nearby stands the Romanesque collegiate church of Saint Martin, a Historic Monument since 2023.