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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Around 200 anti-personnel mines dating from World War Two have been discovered at the construction site of a student dormitary at Krak贸w’s Jagiellonian University.
On Wednesday, excavation work unearthed an old chest containing unexploded ordnance. Military sappers and police were immediately called in to secure the site.
Niewybuchy z czas贸w II wojny 艣wiatowej odkryto na budowie akademika Uniwersytetu Jagiello艅skiego na krakowskim Ruczaju. Na miejscu znaleziono oko艂o 200 min oraz dwa worki z proszkiem o 艂膮cznej wadze oko艂o 60 kilogram贸w. https://t.co/DLFQ8FBzri
— TVP3 Krak贸w (@tvp3krakow) May 7, 2026
All the mines found so far contain explosives but are not equipped with detonators. The authorities are still searching the area with metal detectors for any remaining material.
“There may still be more unexploded ordnance buried underground,” Sergeant El偶bieta Znachowska-Bytnar of Krak贸w police told Radio Krak贸w. “Police and military bomb disposal experts are still working at the site, so the amount recovered may continue to rise.”
While the area has been fenced off, the authorities have not deemed it necessary to evacuate nearby buildings.
The discovery was made during the construction of a new dormitory at a campus outside Krak贸w city centre belonging to the Jagiellonian University, Poland’s oldest university and one of its best. The project, which was launched in March, is expected to provide accommodation for 400 students.
This is not the first such discovery in the area. In 2020, a student found unexploded ordnance near one of the university’s buildings. It was later identified as a training anti-tank mine.
In 2018, in the same district but about 2.5 kilometres from the campus, workers clearing bushes found an object that police later reported may have been a grenade from World War Two, reported the Polish Press Agency (PAP).
Unexploded ordnance is regularly discovered in Poland, which saw heavy fighting during the war. In October last year, two men were hospitalised after an artillery shell that one of them had brought home from a forest exploded in his apartment while the pair were under the influence of alcohol.
Earlier that year, wild boars unearthed 21 mortar shells buried in a forest since the war. In 2023, 72 unexploded artillery shells were discovered during renovation work at a primary school and four pieces of World War Two ordnance were found in the walls of a church undergoing renovation.
Two men have been hospitalised after a World War Two artillery shell that one of them had found in the forest and brought home exploded in his apartment while they were under the influence of alcohol https://t.co/1JEutz40Xe
— Notes from Poland 馃嚨馃嚤 (@notesfrompoland) October 23, 2025
Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.
Main image credit: KMP w Tarnowie (under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Alicja Ptak is deputy editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist. She has written for Clean Energy Wire and The Times, and she hosts her own podcast, The Warsaw Wire, on Poland鈥檚 economy and energy sector. She previously worked聽for聽Reuters.
