Salt Mine

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A short 40 min bus ride from Krakow is the town of Wielczka which is built around a huge salt mine, operating for 700 years, closed for extracting salt after a big flood in 1990. This was an excellent place to visit, good to buy the tickets before hand and we were glad when we came out that we’d gone for the 9am tour. All visitors have to go on a guided tour; it was a little rushed but informative. The mine is amazing, you have the sense of being in a big cave system, but all of it is hewn out of the rocks by man. Salt was the “white gold” of ancient times, being so valuable as a preservative, the men who worked the mines were wealthy, they were paid in salt. There was one 760kg lump of salt on display, apparently it could have bought a village! The construction is interesting, they used larch or pine wood as it is soft and will bend if there is a problem with the roof, rather than snap as would happen with harder woods. There are many levels, I’m not sure how deep we went but it was around 150m (fortunately a lift up!).The Chapel of St Kinga is amazing, a massive hall built by just 3 people, and never together. There was a choir singing which was lovely, excellent acoustics. After a coffee in the underground restaurant (there is also an underground spa, banqueting hall and hotel) we visited the museum, unfortunately our guide was in Polish and only some of the information in English.

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Photos

View up three levels
Chandalier is also made from salt crystals