The discovery was made in the foundations of the former Venus H. Szpiro Chocolate Factory, which operated in the early 20th century at what was then Twarda 10.
According to Warsaw’s conservator of monuments, the team found ceramic molds used to make chocolate pralines along with paper labels that decorated the factory’s packaging.
The conservator described the find as unusual because the items are directly linked to chocolate production and branding, rather than being ordinary building debris.
Archaeologists have also uncovered pots, bottles, fragments of glassware and pieces of tiled stoves, as well as decorative floor tiles in rooms that appear to have been used as offices rather than production halls, local media reported.
The former factory stood opposite the Nożyk Synagogue, which still operates today and is the only prewar Jewish house of prayer in Warsaw to have survived World War II.
The area around Twarda Street was once part of a densely populated Jewish quarter which was turned into the Ghetto by the Nazis.
Heavily damaged during the war, the area was subsequently rebuilt with modern housing and offices.
The excavations are taking place on land where the downtown Śródmieście district plans to build a new cultural complex called "Creative Twarda."
Archaeological research is required before major construction in historic parts of the city, and the work on Twarda Street is part of the preparation for the new building.
Magdalena Łań, from the Warsaw heritage conservation office, said the discovery fits into a wider story about how strongly prewar Warsaw was associated with sweets.
She noted that in the 1920s and '30s, residents would flock to cafés such as Lourse, Semadeni, Wedel and Blikle, the last two of which remain as contemporary confectionery brands.
A 1931 coloring book for children promotes E.Wedel products. Image: Artur Oppman, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The best known surviving producer is E. Wedel, whose large chocolate factory in the Praga district on the right bank of the Vistula River still operates today, and has recently opened a chocolate museum on its premises.
That appetite for sweets helped drive the growth of industrial-scale confectionery manufacture.
City officials say that in the interwar period a number of entrepreneurs set out to build "sweet empires," echoes of which remain today, for example with the popular napoleonka custard and flaky pastry cake which, according to apocryphal evidence, was first created by a patisserie on Plac Napoleona (Napoleon Square, now The Warsaw Uprising Square).
Factories from the 1920s and '30s, including plants run by the Kiełbasiński brothers, Jan Grabowski, Jan Fruziński, Franciszek Anczewski and Franciszek Fuks, have left behind buildings or fragments that can still be seen in different parts of Warsaw.
Some were later nationalized under communism and continued to produce sweets under new names, while others were demolished in the post-communist building boom of the 1990s.
Łań said that despite the scale of the former confectionery industry, only relics of four prewar chocolate and sweets factories, plus one complete complex, have survived in the capital.
The newly uncovered traces of the Venus factory on Twarda Street add another tangible piece to that history and give archaeologists and city historians fresh material on everyday industrial life in prewar Warsaw.
Officials say documentation of the find will be incorporated into the ongoing preparation of the "Creative Twarda" project, which is due to become a new cultural landmark in the city center.
(rt/gs)
Source: PAP, dzieje.pl