Vintage Wieliczka Salt Mine

"Old Salt Mine in Wieliczka is the only mining site in the world, operating continuously since the Middle Ages to the present. Their original production (drifts, slopes, operating the camera, lakes, Shakhno trunks) with a total length of about 300 km, located on 9 levels reaching 327 m depth, illustrate all stages of mining equipment in the various historical epochs ».

Thus do sounded fragment justification of entering the Salt Mine "Wieliczka" in the first list of World Cultural and Natural Heritage. Once in Poland, correspondent NedoSMI first went to this amazing and unique place.
34 Photo © Sergey Mukhammedov

Wieliczka salt was mined 900 years. Mine has become a tourist attraction in the 15th century - three thousand underground chambers, formed after generation, always attracted travelers. In the 18th century it was opened the first full-fledged tourist route and since then its held annually around one million people.

Mine in Wieliczka has nine horizons. First at a depth of 64 meters, the lowest - in the 327. Mine drifts stretched for 300 kilometers. For nine centuries, miners have cut down the salt in more than three thousand underground chambers.

Miner profession has never been safe, and even in those days especially. Devout workers built underground chapel where services were held.

In the seventeenth century one of these chapels burned and banned the use of the Royal Commission into the mine flammable materials. And because of this ban was born zes the original tradition of carving on salt.