Wieliczka Salt Mine in Wieliczka, Poland

The Wieliczka Salt Mine, in the town of Wieliczka, southern Poland, lies within the Kraków metropolitan area.


From Neolithic times, sodium chloride (table salt) was produced there from the upwelling brine. The Wieliczka salt mine, excavated from the 13th century, produced table salt continuously until 2007, as one of the world's oldest operating salt mines. Throughout its history, the royal salt mine was operated by the Żupy Krakowskie (Kraków Salt Mines) company.



Due to falling salt prices and mine flooding, commercial salt mining was discontinued in 1996.



The Wieliczka Salt Mine is now an official Polish Historic Monument (Pomnik Historii). Its attractions include the shafts and labyrinthine passageways, displays of historic salt-mining technology, an underground lake, four chapels and numerous statues carved by miners out of the rock salt, and more recent sculptures by contemporary artists.



The mine is currently one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomniki historii), whose attractions include dozens of statues and four chapels carved out of the rock salt by the miners. The older sculptures have been supplemented with new carvings made by contemporary artists. About 1.2 million people visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine annually.



Notable visitors to this site have included Nicolaus Copernicus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Fryderyk Chopin, Dmitri Mendeleyev, Bolesław Prus, Ignacy Paderewski, Robert Baden-Powell, Jacob Bronowski (who filmed segments of The Ascent of Man in the mine), the von Unrug family (a prominent Polish-German royal family), Karol Wojtyła (later, Pope John Paul II), former U.S. President Bill Clinton, and many others.



There is a chapel, and a reception room that is used for private functions, including weddings. A chamber has walls carved by miners to resemble wood, as in wooden churches built in early centuries. A wooden staircase provides access to the mine's 64-metre level. A 3-kilometre tour features corridors, chapels, statues, and underground lake, 135 metres underground. An elevator returns visitors to the surface; the elevator holds 36 persons and takes about 30 seconds to make the trip.



The Wieliczka Salt Mine reaches a depth of 327 meters, and extends via horizontal passages and chambers for over 287 kilometers. The rock salt is naturally of varying shades of grey, resembling unpolished granite rather than the white crystalline substance that might be expected.



Since the 13th century, brine welling up to the surface had been collected and processed for its sodium chloride (table-salt) content. In this period, wells began to be sunk, and the first shafts to be dug to extract the rock salt. In the late 13th to the early 14th century, the Saltworks Castle was built. Wieliczka is now home to the Kraków Saltworks Museum.



King Casimir III the Great contributed greatly to the development of the Wieliczka Salt Mine, granting it many privileges and taking the miners under his care. In 1363 he founded a hospital near the salt mine.



Over the period of the mine's operation, many chambers were dug and various technologies were added, such as the Hungarian horse treadmill and the Saxon treadmill for hauling salt to the surface. During World War II, the mine was used by the occupying Germans as an underground facility for war-related manufacturing.



The mine features an underground lake, exhibits on the history of salt mining, and a 3.5-kilometer visitors' route (less than 2 percent of the mine passages' total length) including statues carved from the rock salt at various times.





The mine is one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomniki historii), as designated in the first round, 16 September 1994. Its listing is maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland. In 2010 it was successfully proposed that the nearby historic Bochnia Salt Mine (Poland's oldest salt mine) be added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage sites. The two sister salt mines now appear together in the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites as the "Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal Salt Mines". In 2013 the UNESCO World Heritage Site was expanded by the addition of the Żupny Castle.



The earliest writings about the Wieliczka Salt Mine include a description by Adam Schröter: Salinarum Vieliciensium incunda ac vera descriptio. Carmine elegiaco... (in 1553); augmented edition, Regni Poloniae Salinarum Vieliciensium descriptio. Carmine elegiaco... (in 1564).



In 1995, Preisner's Music, a compilation of film music by Polish composer Zbigniew Preisner, was recorded by Sinfonia Varsovia in the Wieliczka mine's chapel. The chapel is often said to have the best acoustics in Europe.



In the Australia television series Spellbinder: Land of the Dragon Lord, the mines were used as the Land of the Moloch.



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