Sandomierz underground tourist route

Medals available in the courtyard by the ticket counters!

Underground Tourist Route: Entrance from Oleśnickich Street, route length 470 m, varying depth reaching up to 12 m below the market square level. Tour duration – 45 min. The route was created during mining works to secure the Old Town by connecting former cellars and underground merchant storerooms.

Sandomierz’s underground passages are shrouded in legends. Over the centuries, tunnels and chambers dug beneath the city were said in stories and legends to stretch to suburban villages Kobierniki and Krakówka, even under the Vistula River to its right bank and further – all the way to Baranów Sandomierski Castle. Here, according to legend, the heroine Halina Krempianka died saving the city from the Tatars. These underground spaces, which provided shelter for residents during Sandomierz’s turbulent history, also caused many building disasters.

Unfortunately, in 1963, failures and sinkholes intensified. Then, a team of researchers from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków developed a special program “Guidelines for Saving the Old Town District in Sandomierz.” A year later, mining works began in the underground. The result was an area of a true labyrinth of cellars, corridors, and excavations forming a multi-level underground city. Some excavations had to be closed for structural reasons. However, 470 meters of underground route were preserved, and in 1977 the Underground Tourist Route was opened to visitors. The deepest chamber reaches 12 m. In December 2007, the Underground Tourist Route was extended with additional renovated rooms under the Oleśnicki Townhouse.