History

Trade and crafts flourished in medieval Rzeszów, founded under the Magdeburg Law in 1354 by King Casimir the Great. The favorable location at the crossing of trade routes as well as numerous royal privileges positively influenced the development of the city. The role of warehouses and the so-called "sklep ziemny" was taken by basements built under tenement houses, a market square and adjacent streets, creating an irregular network of chambers and corridors at various depths, even up to ten meters. The cellars were dug in soft loess soil, then reinforced with oak wood or built with stone or brick. Underground warehouses provided the goods with a sufficiently low storage temperature, and protected them against thieves and fires. In times of threats - wars, Tatar invasions and cataclysms - the cellars provided shelter for the city's inhabitants - the corridors led to the well located in the Market Square, thus allowing access to water, narrow passages favored easy barricading access to the cellars. The chambers, which are currently the shallowest under the Market Square, are the remains of a medieval residential house, in which the relics of a brick rib vault, a stone portal, a stone window and part of the original floor have been preserved. It is the oldest preserved part of the city.

The city's prosperity lasted until the 18th century. After this period, the socio-political situation deteriorated, trade began to decline, and cellars were no longer needed so much. Some of them were buried and bricked up. The shallower ones served for years - during World War II, Jews who had escaped from the Rzeszów ghetto were hiding there, and the "sklepy ziemne" operated until the 1970s.

In the 1960s, due to the infiltration of rainwater into the ground, as well as leaky water and sewage networks, the loess rock lost its stability, posing a threat to the Market Square and tenement houses. The surface and tenement houses collapsed. The decision to save the Rzeszów’s Old Town was made.

As part of the first stage, the workings were liquidated and the corridors and cellars located in the southern and eastern part of the Market Square were secured.

The second stage took place at the end of the 1970s and was a comprehensive rescue and security operation.

The third stage (eighties and nineties of the twentieth century) was carried out under strict conservation and archaeological supervision and led to the protection of the foundations and basements of most tenement houses in the Market Square, as well as to the strengthening and clearing of the chambers and corridors connecting them under the Market Square. Properly secured and restored cellars and corridors were used to create the Podziemna Trasa Turystyczna "Rzeszowskie Piwnice".

After the completion of the adaptation works, in December 2000, Podziemna Trasa Turystyczna , 213 m long, was ready. It consisted of 34 rooms - chambers and corridors as well as stairways. The lowest cellar on the route was on the depth of 9 m 58 cm. The narrowest point on the route was the Tatar Dungeons, 70 cm wide, located between the tenement house at Rynek 14 and the artificial Lubomirski corridor. The entire route received electric lighting, and light points were installed both under the vault and close to the floor. Podziemna Trasa Turystyczna was opened on April 19, 2001, and was administered by Muzeum Okręgowe in Rzeszów.

The fourth phase of the reconstruction of Rzeszów's Old Town is the project "Realization of the second part of Podziemna Trasa Turysyczna along with the reconstruction of the Old Town Square in Rzeszów", including a comprehensive reconstruction of the Market Square, extension of Podziemna Trasa Turystyczna by 156 meters and construction of the entrance to the route. During the works, fragments of cellar buildings from the 16th-18th centuries and traces of a town fire in 1842 were discovered and secured. Archaeological work has shown the existence of traces of human activity in this place three thousand years BC. After the completion of the project, the extended route was 369 meters long and also included a small loop of mine workings under the entrance pavilion and several corridors and cellars leading towards the Rynek 19 tenement house, i.e. the previous exit from the underground. The inauguration of the extended route took place on December 14, 2007.

The fifth and final stage is the implementation, from 2017, of the project "Rzeszowskie Piwnice - Interactive Cultural Institution" under Measure 8.1 Protection of cultural heritage and development of cultural resources of the Infrastructure and Environment Operational Program for 2014-2020. The subject of the project was the purchase of equipment and fittings, which allowed for the creation of a new version of Rzeszowskie Piwnice as an interactive cultural institution, combining historical aspects with modern techniques and methods of showing the multi-threaded history of Rzeszów in a wider perspective than before. The facility has an IT network and a sound system necessary for the functioning of the exhibition. In order to ensure safety, an access control system, a fire alarm system and a video monitoring system (CCTV) were made. The guides were equipped with a wireless communication system. An important element of the project was also the preparation of documentation and execution of construction works necessary for the implementation of multimedia exhibitions, including electrical and teletechnical installations. The facility was made available to recipients on January 3, 2022.