Of special interest is the town hall of the Old Town of Toruń, built in Gothic style, which was the seat of the municipal authorities. It was a place where the City Council, municipal offices, the municipal chancellery and the Municipal Archives were located. The archives stored the most precious documents and records, which illustrate the high culture of the city.

Among many parchment and paper books as well as other documents and files kept in the Town Hall there are also wax tablets, used by the city administration since the late 13th century until 1530. They were kept here until 1951 when they were moved to the building of the State Archives at 4 Rapacki Square.

Wax tablets were a popular and useful writing material used in ancient times as well as in the Middle Ages. They were used by private individuals, students at schools, merchants to carry out calculations, and churches and offices to write down all activities and decisions taken, but first of all to register incomes and expenses. The side of the tablet covered with wax could be used many times and all the user needed to do was to smear out the old text. Since the 14th century the wax tablets were gradually being replaced by parchment and later on by paper. In Toruń wax tablets were used until the year 1530. Unfortunately, only few of them survived to become the rare objects kept in archives, libraries and museums. Very few of these tablets have survived to the present day; the examples from municipal offices are extremely rare. Apart from the examples from Toruń, in Poland such tablets are to be found at Gdańsk, Cracow, Szczecin, Legnica, Jawor, Kórnik and Elbląg. The biggest collection of polyptychs after the Toruń one is the collection of tablets from the State Archives in Gdańsk, which has 4 polyptychs composed of 36 tablets. In Germany, the largest collection (six polyptychs) is found in Leipzig, other examples are preserved in Umstadt, Hanover, Wismar, Halle, Arnstadt and Lübeck. The collection from the State Archives in Toruń - according to what we know presently - constitutes the world's best-preserved collection of tablets coming from one chancellery, which were used continuously for 300 years from the late 13th century until 1530.

According to research carried out by art historians (M. Kutzner and E. Pilecka) the oldest Toruń tablets were made and decorated in the workshops of Lübeck and the neighbouring cities in the late 13th century.

The collection of Toruń tablets makes it possible to refute the theory that cities founded in the 13th century in Germany and Poland did not have their own chancelleries and offices which kept their own books. The tablets prove that in the late 13th century big medieval cities such as Toruń, Gdańsk or Elbląg had chancelleries, which used books in the form of wax codices.

The content of Toruń tablets is well known. They were deciphered and published by Karol Górski and Witold Szczuczko. The texts were written in many layers and the last one dates back to 1530.

The tablets contain financial dealings of many kinds including rents, financial dealings of the municipal council and burghers and those relating to paying off debts. The tablets were also used to write down wilkierze (municipal laws) and resolutions of the municipal council.

The tablets are in good condition and some of them underwent preservation. The preservation methods were worked out in the Department of Paper and Leather Preservation of the Nicholas Copernicus University in Toruń by dr Elżbiety Jabłońskiej in collaboration with prof. Alicja Strzelczyk.