The basements of one of the city’s largest pre-war vaults were uncovered during excavation work on Kant Island (formerly Kneiphof) in the winter of 2024. The dungeons of the Stadtbank (City Bank) were discovered near the descent to the island from the Trestle Bridge (Estakadny Bridge) and the Sculpture Park. Among the first to enter the underground site were antique collector Sergey Popov and a local tour guide known in the city as Zhenyay Ogon. Judging by their photographs, workers stumbled upon an open entrance to the vault. The blast-proof door had been jammed for about 60 years; back then, it was buried under the rubble of the never-restored houses of Kneiphof, and the premises remained hidden from the eyes of Kaliningrad residents for decades. However, it appears that shortly after the Great Patriotic War, the first settlers had already thoroughly explored the area.

'The rooms inside are very well preserved,' said tour guide Zhenyay Ogon. 'You can see rusty bank deposit boxes on the floor. The metal grilles and marble-chip flooring have survived, and there are stalactites everywhere on the ceiling.'

The authorities had plans to turn the site into a museum, but for now, the premises have been sealed off, waiting for better times.

The meaning of this phrase lies in a call for independent thinking, a rejection of blindly following authorities, and a readiness to make one's own decisions and form one's own views. Kant viewed the Enlightenment as man's emergence from his self-imposed "immaturity" — a state in which a person is unable to use their own reason without the guidance of another.

The casket contained 11 items: medallions, rings, and divination tokens, all covered with magical symbols and inscriptions in Latin, Hebrew, Greek, and German. It is believed that these objects were directly related to alchemy and were intended for performing secret rituals.

Presumably, the last owner of the casket was King Frederick William II of Prussia, the successor to Frederick the Great. Currently, the artifact is on display at the Kaliningrad Regional Museum of History and Arts.

On July 5, 1990, the Presidium of the City Council decided to open Kaliningrad to foreign visitors. In 1991, the entire region was opened to tourists from abroad. The chairman of the regional executive committee, Yuri Malinkin, remarked at the time that this came as a 'complete surprise'.

The most numerous travelers in the first half of the nineties were former residents of the East Prussian territory. However, according to tour guides and interpreters, Germans had been finding ways to visit their native lands even before 1990.

The first foreigners arrived illegally as early as 1988: by ferry via Klaipėda, and then by taxi across the Curonian Spit. They were looking for the places where they used to live. One man had spent his pre-war years in what is now the Baltiysky District. He lived in Frankfurt am Main in Germany and was quite a wealthy man. I remember that he later returned here again, and we went to the Baltiysky District administration office on Pavlik Morozov Street.

The first group of German tourists was officially brought in on April 28, 1991, by the travel agency Schnieder Reisen. The company organized a charter flight from Hamburg. According to the recollections of Rainer Neumann, a co-owner of the agency who was the head of sales at the time, the Germans were flown to the region on an Aeroflot aircraft. The plane, which had a capacity of 150 passengers, was completely full. That same year, Schnieder Reisen also brought a group by plane to Riga, from where the travelers were taken to the Kaliningrad region by bus.

Since the Kaliningrad region had only just been opened to tourists, it naturally became a very interesting and popular destination, primarily for people who finally had the opportunity to see the places where they were born or their former homeland again. Later, the descendants of that generation began visiting the region. On August 10, 1991, the first train carrying German tourists arrived in the region, and just over a year later, on September 5, 1992, the first cruise ship, the Polaris, arrived at the port of Kaliningrad with 80 Americans on board. On May 19, 1993, an international tourist route connecting Kaliningrad, Frombork, and Elbląg was launched. However, most groups were brought in by bus.