Before coming to Wieliczka on the outskirts of Kraków in Southern Poland, my idea of what it might be like in a salt mine was informed largely by Hollywood and the Cold War. Hollywood – didn’t Ben-Hur (AKA Chuck Heston) start his working life in the service of the Roman Emperor as a lowly salt miner on starvation wages? I remember it was about the dreariest part of the whole film! Cold War – all those Western jokes inspired by Gulag life in the Soviet Union about political prisoners being sent to a Siberian salt mine by the Bolsheviks, real gallows humour but with a distinctively sobering edge to it when you realise it really happened. So, taking a tour down a salt mine didn’t sound like fun – cold, dark, dank, claustrophobically tight for space, suffocatingly discomforting. But Wieliczka turned out to be a fascinating place to visit!
From the top we had to descend down a narrow wooden staircase over 35 flights of stairs (fortunately you don’t have to return via this route as there are lifts that take you up). Once at the operational level you discover that part of the erstwhile salt mine is actually a huge sculpture palace/museum … the older pieces were carved out of the natural rock by miners, the newer ones by contemporary artists. Many of the salt sculptures have a religious theme (the Last Supper, Pope John-Paul II).
The underground tour, 327m below the surface, goes for three kilometres and it looks like there a lot of space down there, not as cramped as I imagined it would be. Whilst doing the tour though it is hard to appreciate just how big the mine is (287m long in fact!). The tourist route (there is also a pilgrims’ route and a miners’ route) takes us a tiny fraction of the mine’s entirety. At various points of the mine passageway there are dozens of sculptures of historical and mythological figures and an underground lake too.
The mine’s highlight is its four magnificent salt chapels (Wieliczka has been characterised as a vast underground salt cathedral!). Even the impressive chandeliers in the chapels are made from salt. It’s amazing to reflect that Kopalnia soli Wieliczka yielded the everyday commodity of table salt from the 13th century continuously till 2007 when it ceased production. Whilst you are undertaking the tour you might want to hold off on buying any of the salt mine souvenirs at the underground kiosk. The stalls outside sell most of the same momentos for less than half the price (even the shop at the exit at ground level is cheaper than the kiosk).
“Graduation Tower“Outside the salt mine is an attractive park setting, and across from the park is the Graduation Tower, a fortress like structure 22.5m high which is a pointer to the fact that Wieliczka was a spa town in the 19th century. People visit the Tower separately (apparently) to inhale brine for relief from respiratory ailments. The salt mine is a UNESCO Heritage Site and is reachable by bus or car from the city of Kraków.
