Kraków: Mysteries of the Wieliczka Salt Mine
DURATION: 2-4 hours, PAX: 20 max
The emotional journey beyond the tourist route of the Wieliczka Salt Mine, visited every year by over a million of tourists from all over the world, allows one to discover a magnifcent world, and become acquainted with this austere and fascinating realm. Equipped with crash helmets, mining lamps and carbon oxide absorbers and dressed in protective outfits and gloves, the visitors go to the salt labyrinth in a mining lift in St. Kinga’s shaft. The mine expedition is an opportunity to feel like modern explorers: history researchers, observers of underground singularities and adventure hunters. Discovering the mysteries of the Wieliczka Salt Mine is remniscent of mountain hiking and is equally demanding, as the visitors have to climb ladders, and sometimes rest on their hands or incline their heads in a narrow passage. The diffcult route allows one to imagine the toil of the miners of old who bored the salt rock at the dimlight of oil lamps.
Marked out at the 1st, 2nd and 3rd level of the mine through excavations of particular value in terms of history and geology, the sightseeing route offers a journey in time. Subsequent passages and chambers depict the ways in which salt was excavated in the course of centuries. They include, for example, the region of the oldest shaft in which rock salt excavation started in the middle of the 13th century. The participants learn about the various ways of securing the mine.
