Rzeszow’s Old Town

The Underground Route runs under the tenement houses and the surface of the Main Square, connecting all its frontages. Particular cellars and passages were named according to their functions and the city’s history.

The route has many attractions and also secrets. You may find there remnants of medieval stone walls, traces of fires, remainders of iron bars and hinges on which greedy time has left its traces, several-hundred-year-old hand-made “finger” bricks, hidden passages. The cellars gain additionally in attractiveness with the educational historical exhibition, made up among others of replicas of knight armours, melee weapons and firearms, an exhibition of earthenware and ceramic toys showing what pottery and other everyday objects were once in use in Rzeszow. Rzeszow’s Main Square of the turn of the XX century can be seen in huge photographs by the entrance. A specific “educational path” is made by the Coat-of-Arms Passage, which contains coats of arms of former Rzeszow owners, of lands and provinces the city was located within, then those of the very city of Rzeszow. See photo gallery here: http://www.erzeszow.pl/en/55/55/art17.html

After visiting the Underground Route, you may see interesting exhibitions in the Rzeszow City History Museum, a branch of the Regional Museum in Rzeszow.

The Regional Museum in Rzeszow was started by The Regional Society of the Rzeszow Region in 1935. The first custodian was Franciszek Kotula. Since 1953, the Museum’s main seat is a historic building at 3. Maja St. 19, once a part of a Piarist architectural complex, built in late XVII century. The historic value of the former convent is raised by polychromes in the cloister refectory, pharmacy and porch from the end of XVII century, ascribed to a monastic painter by the name of Łukasz Limecki. Current collections of the Museum include over 240 000 exhibits gained through research, own search, acquisition and as gifts. The Main Building holds the departments of archaeology, history, art, a scientific library and its own conservation studio. The Museum’s work includes organising exhibitions, scientific, educational and publishing activities.

Exhibits from the Museum’s collections come from the areas of former Puszcza Sandomierska (Sandomierz Forest) in the fork of the Vistula and San rivers as well as the Wisłok river basin, inhabited by two ethnographic groups: Lasowiaks and Rzeszowiaks. On over 25 ha of area, partially covered by woods and groves, there are over 40 large and many smaller objects of rural architecture. Aside of building surrounded with small gardens and greenery, the collections of the open-air museum include local equipment and tools for work as well as objects of everyday use in the household. Particularly interesting buildings include: a windmill complex, a watermill, the school and inn buildings.