Just 70km from Wrocław is the rarely visited, sleepy little town of Wałbrzych, a former bustling coal mining centre spread out over a few foothills of the Sudety Mountains. It’s an unlikely place to make international news, and yet it’s been in the spotlight on and off since August 2015, as one of the biggest stories to grip Poland in recent times unfolded here - the search for a mysterious Nazi gold train, rumoured to have been buried in an underground tunnel with tonnes upon tonnes of stolen treasure transported from Breslau (Wrocław) as WWII drew to a close.
Speculated treasure aside, Wałbrzych has some very real riches that make it a worthwhile day trip from Wrocław. Dating back to at least the 12th century, the Lower Silesian town boasts a vast industrial legacy of coal mining, porcelain production, and textile mills; complicated WWII history; and Poland’s third-largest castle. Venture here and you can visit a modern cultural centre located in a converted mine (the Old Mine Science & Art Centre), meander through lavish rooms at Książ Castle, gaze at some fine porcelain in a specially-dedicated museum, hike in the nearby Owl Mountains (Góry Sowie), and take in the atmosphere of small-town Poland, far removed from Wrocław’s cosmopolitan hum (and, for better or worse, many of its comforts).
THE TREASURE
The almost-forgotten story burst forth anew in August of 2015, when two treasure hunters - Piotr Koper of Poland and Andreas Richter of Germany - came forward claiming they had located the gold train with ground-penetrating radar technology after hearing the deathbed confession of an unnamed German involved in the original operation. The pair offered to disclose the location to the Polish government in exchange for a 10% finders’ fee, and a deal was soon struck. By September, the authorities sectioned off the search site, located at ul. Uczniowska in Wałbrzych’s Szczawienko district, at the ‘65th kilometre’ of the Wrocław-Wałbrzych railway, to clear it of trees and possible mines or booby traps (and keep out hordes of amateurs armed with metal detectors). Two months later, the treasure hunters and a team of experts from the AGH University of Science and Technology in Kraków were given the go-ahead to survey the area with magnetic field detectors, thermal imaging cameras, and radars; the results were disappointing - the official report stated that there was maybe a collapsed tunnel, but no train. Despite a firm negative from the AGH team, Koper and Richter decided to push on with their own funds, coming to an agreement with the site’s official owner, Polish State Railways. The long-awaited excavation works began on August 16th, 2016 and somewhat unsurprisingly, and to many people's disappointment, nothing was found... despite there being no firm evidence to support the existence of the legendary gold train, but legend lives on...
