Another of Poland’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites, placed on the original list back in 1978, the Wieliczka Salt Mine is a truly remarkable site to see. From salt statues carved by miners to beautiful underground lakes, the 2 km tour (which explores less than 1% of the entire complex!) reveals the remarkable history dating back almost 700 years and is definitely worth a visit.
A little further out of Kraków than some of the other places I’ve explored, there’s no doubt in my mind that the salt mine is absolutely worth the 40 minute bus ride. The 304 takes you from Kraków right to the doorstep of the mine (stop: Wieliczka Kopalnia Soli) so it’s super simple to get to. Just turn up the road on the right and go through the entrance to the ticket booths.
Re. COVID-19 – hand sanitiser is provided upon arrival (you have to use it, they won’t let you through if you don’t) and there are temperature checks at the entrance where they scan your wrist. You also have to wear a mask throughout the tour but that’s about it.
Tickets cost 93PLN per person for English tours unless you happen to bump into a guy who is slightly wet and miserable from the rainy weather and annoyed that the people that booked his private tour didn’t turn up so selling their tickets off for cheap. If that happens, he’ll sell you a ticket for 50PLN and you’ll be laughing (like I was).
Included in the price of the ticket is entrance to the mines, the guided tour in English – they leave on the hour so don’t miss it or you’ll be sat around waiting for the next one – and entrance to the museum at the end. Tours also run in other languages at specific times throughout the day but English and Polish are most common.
The tour stars by descending almost 400 steps at the Daniłowicz Shaft. I feel dizzy just thinking about how many times the staircase swirled round and down but that was thankfully the worst part of the tour. What followed more than made up for it (and I suppose I should be grateful that it was simply going down the stairs rather than up them; thinks back to climbing the Eiffel Tower and cries internally).
Moving through the mines you get to see a series of fantastic sculptures and statues, many of which were actually done not by artists but the miners themselves. Look out for the slightly creepy dwarves and the truly remarkable scene depicting the legend of Princess Kinga, the patron saint of miners.
The legend of Princess Kinga is an interesting, if slightly odd one. She was a Hungarian princess that asked for a lump of salt as her dowry for her marriage to the Prince of Kraków. For some reason, she threw her engagement ring into a mine in Hungary before leaving for Poland. When she visited the Wieliczka Salt Mine to collect her salt, the miners dug out a chunk and split it in two to find her ring there inside. A remarkable story, I’m sure you’ll agree.
Along the tourist route, there are scenes that demonstrate what life was like for miners and my tour guide was both incredibly knowledgeable and also very funny as she told the stories and filled us in on the human – and animal – experiences of working underground.
The tour is divided roughly into three sections as you descend the mine. As you move down between levels 1 and 2, there’s an great example of the wooden pully system that was used to move salt around the mines. From there, it’s down another set of stairs (only about 200 that time, and more like a gentle slope down rather than a tight descent) which gave me huge Moria vibes. I couldn’t help but smile to myself as I imagined being in a dwarvish mine.
90m underground is where you’ll find the little dwarf statues, although they do look a tad more like grumpy gnomes in some lights.
Passing through one pretty church (one of 40 underground) where the wood is imbued with salt that preserves it better than the pure salt statues themselves, you have to prepare yourself for the chapel. It truly is something else. Salt chandeliers hang from the ceiling, incredible depictions of the Nativity and other famous Christian art work such as The Last Supper line the walls. I’m not religious but it was a remarkable sight indeed.
Moving down to the final level, 130m below ground, there are lakes of salt water. The air in those chambers feels remarkable (even through a mask) and you can practically feel it’s cleansing effects. According to our guide, breathing in salty air is amazing for your health and, unlike coal miners who suffered tremendously, salt miners rarely had respiratory problems. It is apparently a great place to come if you have asthma as it soothes the system.
The Komora Michałowice (Chamber Michałowice) is another remarkable sight. I can’t remember how tall it is but it was so high that a ridiculous amount of wooden beams was needed to support it and what the miners ended up with was actually beautiful. So uniquely stunning that it has apparently even been used as a set in a Bollywood film.
Sadly, the tour comes to an end not much long after. Passing through a second gift shop, there’s an opportunity to get some food and then move on. Included in the price of the ticket is a museum which goes deeper into the history of the mine however I didn’t make use of it. Sort of wish I had but you have to wait for certain times to be escorted there as part of a group (understandably, they don’t want to lose anyone in the maze of tunnels) and I didn’t fancy waiting any longer.
On the way out, you may be happy to know that you don’t have to climb 800 steps to get back to the surface. Instead, you get into these tiny little lifts. Apparently, they can fit nine people but I will be forever grateful that they only put five in ours. I’m not claustrophobic but I do have a deep discomfort concerning lifts and being in one that small was not hugely fun. Still, we made it to the surface safely (unless I’m writing this from beyond the grave) and I was most relieved to step out and exit through the third and final gift shop.
I’m gonna take a moment to be a little nerdy and appreciate the actual salt that made the site famous. Walking through the mines, I was surprised that the salt looks almost like granite and sandstone. Apparently, you can discern the difference by touching them – salt is cold to the touch, sandstone is warm. It is secondary crystalisation that produces layers of rough, ‘cauliflower’ like salt crystals that are white.
Some of the tunnels are smooth from air currents that erode the surfaces, others rough to the touch. There is an abundance of stalactites and stalagmites as salty water (more saturated than the Dead Sea) drips through the caves and forms the thin structures at a remarkable rate of 1cm a month, versus a typical 1cm a year in other caves. It’s just really cool to see the different ways that the salt exists, okay?
So, you might have guessed that I had a great time and you’d be right. I totally recommend a trip to the salt mine if you’ve got a day to spare; you won’t regret it.
Tales from Around the World 