Opatów Underground Tourist Route

Beneath Opatów's market square runs a labyrinth that merchants dug into the soft loess over the centuries to store wine, herring, hides, spices, wax and salt. Today it is the Prof. Zbigniew Strzelecki Underground Tourist Route: about 500 metres of passages and chambers on three levels, the lowest reaching 14.5 m below the square. The cellars were rescued only when the historic houses above them started to crack.

History: a town that went underground

Opatów lay at a crossroads of major trade routes, and the assemblies of the Sandomierz nobility in St Martin's Collegiate Church and the land courts gave merchants a steady market. The town walls, however, limited room for new warehouses, while a thick layer of loess – almost 20 m deep here – let them dig chamber after chamber beneath their houses, level below level. The cellars were probably begun in the 13th century; the oldest details visible on the route date from the 15th century, and they saw their heaviest use as stores in the 16th and 17th centuries. Constant temperatures and difficult access for intruders made them ideal warehouses.

After years of neglect the problem resurfaced when the old-town houses began to decay. In the 1960s and 1970s the cellars were explored by the Kraków Caving Club under engineer Stanisław Nowosielski, and from 1971 rescue work followed a method devised by a team from the AGH University of Science and Technology led by Zbigniew Strzelecki. Miners from a Bytom mining contractor linked the chambers into a single route, which opened in 1984.

What to see

• Three levels of cellars – from brick-vaulted passages to chambers cut into the loess.
• Named chambers, including Żmigród, Mała Lessowa, Górnicza, Strzelnica (Shooting Range), Partyzancka, Kupiecka (Merchants') and Geologiczna. Sources differ: over twenty chambers along about 500 m, or over 46 chambers along 335 m.
• Exhibitions on the history of Opatów and the surrounding area along the route.

Tripto tip

The entrance and exit are at the same spot, Plac Obrońców Pokoju 18. The route is open all year, visits are only in guided groups, and the tour takes about 45 minutes. Check current hours and prices before you go with the operator, the Opatów County Cultural Centre. It is cool inside – quoted temperatures range from about 7–10°C to 8–12°C – so bring a sweater even in summer and wear comfortable shoes, as there are stairs. Afterwards, see the Romanesque Collegiate Church of St Martin, the 16th-century Warsaw Gate and the late Baroque Bernardine church.