The Wieliczka salt mine is a historical landmark that has been around since the 13th century and has been designated as such by UNESCO. The mine provided huge wealth for Poland. Natural treasures like underground lakes and intricate salt carvings have also helped it become a cultural treasure trove. The salt mine is in southern Poland, near Krakow. Royalty and global leaders have been hosted in the mine’s caverns, and it was even the site of an attempt to set a world record for underground ballooning. Nearly 450 feet underground, visitors can explore some of the mine’s 152-mile-long passageways.
Over the years, the caverns that were made from digging have been transformed into places straight out of a fairy tale. There are now large halls lit by salt chandeliers, chapels dedicated to Polish saints, and walkways that give a magnificent view of the underground lakes.
Many miners became artists after they were done with their dangerous job. They would carve intricate designs into the rock salt. In 1996, mining stopped, and the area is now mostly used by tourists. You can still take walking tours of the mine that take you almost 450 feet underground.
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The Wieliczka Salt Mine is about 10 miles from Krakow, one of Poland’s oldest cities. The building at the entrance to the mine is pretty small compared to what’s down there. At a depth of 330 feet, St. Kinga’s chapel is one of the most impressive rooms you can reach. It has chandeliers and religious symbols carved into the salt walls.
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St. Kinga is a very important saint in Poland and Lithuania. She is the patron saint of miners, and Wieliczka is a tribute in her honor, as you might expect. In a later scene, she is featured carved entirely out of salt. After going down a grand staircase, you come to a large hall with carvings on the walls and a shrine to St. Kinga at one end. In fact, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Last Supper” is carved into a rock salt wall in St. Kinga’s chapel.
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Before they began this dangerous work, the miners at Wieliczka prayed. Almost everything you see in these mines was made by carving salt. However, wet air moving up the shaft has caused some damage to the carvings, which is sad. But to stop cave-ins, the miners built a wooden structure passageway called a “box crib.”
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In Poland’s Wieliczka salt mine, salt crystals were used to make glamorous chandeliers. Due to the salinity of underground water, the air is damp. Over time, this causes salt crystals to form everywhere, making stalactites and covering things. There are dioramas all over the museum that show the history and methods of mining. A scene, also made out of salt, shows St. Kinga. Legend has it that she asked for her wedding dowry to be in salt and then made the Wieliczka salt mine appear by magic.
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How did St. Kinga get Poland to have a salt mine? It’s not simple. UNESCO says that this is how the story goes: Kinga, a princess from Hungary, was supposed to get married to Duke Bolesaw of Poland. Both of them were wealthy, so she didn’t think it was necessary for her to bring money to the wedding. She asked her father to make her dowry up of salt instead. It was hard to do this because it would take a whole salt mine. Her father took her to a salt mine in Hungary to demonstrate his point.
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She got married and moved to Poland, where something amazing happened. She was walking around her new estate when she told her men to start digging. They found huge amounts of salt. One of her men gave her a lump of white rock salt to show her what they had found.
When she broke it open, she found her wedding ring inside. She had dropped it into a mine in Hungary. With her ring, she had somehow brought a salt mine to Poland. The salt that was found there made her people very rich, and Kinga was said to be a kind and fair leader. She was later made a saint.
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Wieliczka salt comes in several shades of green, grey, and gold. St. Kinga’s chapel sculptor used honey-colored rock salt to highlight baby Jesus in the nativity scene. Most of the salt at Wieliczka is green. The honey-colored fore-shaft salt is one of the most valuable types of salt found in the mine.
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Just off the upper gallery at St. Kinga’s Chapel, visitors can choose between two routes: the miners’ route, which gives a technical history of mining, and the more scenic tourists’ route. There are more than 800 steps on the tourist route.
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The path goes down through four different “stories” that are about 450 feet deep. The tour goes for just over two miles through tunnels, stairs, and caverns. At about 62 degrees, it can be a little chilly in the mine. Poland’s Wieliczka Salt Mine even features a narrow wooden staircase. Once you get to the bottom, you don’t have to go back up all those stairs. You can take an elevator. But in the 1800s, miners did not have the luxury of a staircase. This old engraving shows the “devil’s drop,” a rope that brought miners down to the pit face.
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The underground salt lakes are one of the most amazing things you’ll see on your trip down the mine. People often propose to their partners in these romantic spots. One of the lakes is called Lake Wessel. The mine is close to underground salt water, which needs to be managed all the time. In 1993, the mine’s lowest levels, well below Lake Wessel, flooded completely. An engraving from the 1800s shows that people would even go to the lakes as tourists back then.
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Another flooding occurred on April 13, 1993. The AP claimed that the water came in all at once at the lowest rate of 100 gallons per minute. The agency said the flooding went on for about eight months, filling the lowest levels all the way down 1,079 feet. As the floods were not high enough to hurt tourists, no one was hurt at the time. The water is under control now, but the disaster led to the decision to stop using that area for commercial salt mining.
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In 2000, a world record attempt for underground ballooning took place in the Stanisaw Staszic chamber, one of the caverns. Krzysztof Rekas, a balloonist, was able to float 7 feet above the floor of a cave 410 feet underground. Stanisaw Staszic chamber is one of the biggest rooms in the mine. The site said he didn’t have to fly very high to break the record. All he had to do was get off the ground. The Guinness Book of Records says that Austrian balloonist Ivan Trifonov beat Rekas’s record in 2014 when he sailed his balloon 675 feet deep into a cave in Croatia.
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Wieliczka is still making salt sculptures. During the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, the Italian national team stayed in Wieliczka. As a gift to the players, modern sculptors were asked to make a salt sculpture for them. Salt was used to make soccer balls and boots for each player.
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There have been many important people at the mines. When Prince Edward of the United Kingdom and his wife, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, went to Poland in 2004, they were shown around by the Polish people.
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Donald Tusk, the prime minister of Poland at the time, had also invited the leaders of the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary to a meeting hosted in the magnificent salt mine. Tusk showed how proud his country is of the salt mine by inviting other members of the Visegrád Group to meet there. The Visegrád Group, or V4, is an alliance of four Eastern European countries. At the time, it was led by Tusk, Jan Fischer of the Czech Republic, Gordon Bajnai of Hungary, and Robert Fico of Slovakia. Tusk was later elected president of the European Council, a position he held from 2014 to 2019.
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