Wieliczka Salt Mine

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Commercial mining began in the Wieliczka salt mine early in the 13th century. Salt is still being taken from the mine by evaporating the salty mine water that has been pumped to the surface. Mining of salt by digging stopped in 1996. In centuries past when a horse entered the mine they never saw daylight again, but were worked and housed within the mine. Miners also spent long periods of time in the mine. To alleviate boredom skilled miners carved statues, rooms and a chapel from the salt. We got the chance to tour three levels of the MANY levels of the mine. The tour we took allowed us to see the sights from 64 to 135 meters below the ground. First we had to walk down 400 stairs to get to the first (64 meter) level. It was funny to hear some of the people groan and complain about that number of stairs. I thought they were lucky they were only having to go down the stairs. We rode back up in mining elevators. The stairs were lighted from bottom to top. Most of us were brave enough to look down the stairway through the middle bannister. It looked like there was no bottom to the stairway. In fact, the mine shaft went for hundreds of more meters to reach the bottom level of the mine. We stopped quite early in the descent compared to how far down we could have gone. 400 steps down in a set that must reach thousands is a small part of the walk ‘downstairs’ available in that mine. The steps are wooden with seven steps between each landing.

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