An entire city, carved in salt. A network of tunnels stretching for hundreds of kilometers is hidden near Krakow
A short distance from Krakow lies a spectacular universe, carved not in stone, but in salt. It is a huge underground complex, formed over millennia, which decisively influenced the life of local communities and which, over time, turned into a real underground city, with chapels, museums and impressive sculptures, all carved out of salt.
Chapel of St. Kinga/PHOTO: X
The story of this place begins about 13.5 million years ago, when sea waters covered the basin at the foot of the Carpathians in Central Europe. The gradual retreat of the waters, caused by tectonic movements, left behind massive deposits of salt embedded in the rocks of the area, notes IFLScience.
Archaeological research in the Wieliczka Salt Mine has revealed the oldest known tools for extracting salt from Central Europe, dating back to the Neolithic period. Early communities collected brine from natural springs and boiled it until the water evaporated, yielding salt used mostly for food preservation. This practice was used for centuries, until the 11th–12th centuries, when surface sources began to dry up.
With the disappearance of the natural brine, the first salt wells were dug, followed by underground galleries. In the 13th century, large-scale mining began, turning Wieliczka into one of the oldest working salt mines in the world.
Mining continued uninterrupted for centuries and ended only in 1996, after the mine had already been included in the UNESCO World Heritage List and declared a historical monument of Poland.
Today, the underground network stretches over 245 kilometers of galleries, arranged on nine levels, reaching a depth of 327 meters. Among the most spectacular spaces is the chapel of St. Kinga, located approximately 101 meters underground. Here, chandeliers, religious bas-reliefs, a statue of Pope John Paul II and a reinterpretation of Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper” are made entirely of salt.
Over time, the mine's corridors were traversed by prominent figures of European culture, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt or Nicolaus Copernicus. Today, the Wieliczka Salt Mine is not just a tourist attraction, but a living testimony of geological history, medieval industry and centuries of human labor, preserved, layer by layer, deep in the earth.
