Metal tube sat unopened for decades in Poland museum — until now. What was inside?

In the mid-1990s, archaeologists were called to a street in Wrocław, Poland, and discovered a small, metal cylinder.

The metal shape was clearly old, but not thinking too much of it, archaeologists placed the tube in the city museum , according to a July 2 news release from the Ministerstwo Nauki i Szkolnictwa Wyższego, the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

For years, the cylinder remained untouched, officials said. Then, specialists realized there was something inside.

Katarzyna Kroczak, chief conservator of collections at the Ossoliński National Institute, said the first step was to disinfect what was now known as a capsule, according to the release.

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Then, the research teams had to strategize how to safely open the capsule without damaging whatever may be hiding inside, Kroczak said.

The tube was gently cut open, and the contents were revealed — a letter and a newspaper.

The odd cylinder was a time capsule from 1865, officials said.

A letter rolled up inside had been written 150 years ago by three neighbors all living on the street where the tube was later found, according to the release.

The neighbors wrote about a renovation project that was happening on an old water supply system on their street, officials said, and wrote that they were commemorating the moment with the time capsule.

Each neighbor signed the letter, and wrapped it with a Breslauer Zeitung newspaper from the day the capsule was hidden, according to the release.

Archaeologists said it is rare to be able to identify who an artifact belonged to, but in this case, they were able to identify the neighbors and find other documentation about them, thereby reconstructing their lives more than a century and a half later.

The reconstruction outlined in the letter was part of the last rounds of renovations of a medieval water supply system, officials said, and shortly after the capsule was put together, construction on a modern system began in Wrocław.

The capsule, letter and newspaper have now been put on display in the museum, a preserved moment in time.

Wrocław is about a 215-mile drive southwest from Warsaw.

Google Translate was used to translate the news release from the Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

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