The Słuszków Hoard

Słuszków lies 23 km north-east of Kalisz. In 1935, during work in the fields, the world's largest hoard of cross denarii was discovered there. Its concealment is linked to the struggle for the throne in the first decade of the 12th century between Bolesław Wrymouth and his brother Zbigniew. One episode of that war was Bolesław's capture of the Kalisz stronghold in 1106. The owner of the hoard remains unknown.

When it was found, the hoard held around 20,000 coins, together with jewellery and scrap silver. The finders gave away part of it or melted it down into wedding rings. In 1958 the archaeologist Krzysztof Dąbrowski of the Institute of the History of Material Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences bought back more than 12,000 coins and several dozen fragments of jewellery for science.

The most valuable part is the largest group of extremely rare coins of Sieciech, palatine of Władysław Herman: 122 pieces out of around 150 known. They bear the characteristic palatine's mark. Another important group consists of cross denarii struck at Duke Zbigniew's mint in Kalisz. In the exhibition the hoard lies next to Bolesław the Brave's arrow denarius.