Wieliczka Salt Mine is where history and your food plate meets.
You are having a lovely dinner with your friends and stretch out after some more salt. But do you know how it got to your table? This days its probably not from Europe. But until 1996 there was a big chance it come from Poland and the Wieliczjka Salt Mine. The mine was started at the second half of the 13-century even if we can trace the salt extraction in Wieliczka to prehistorical times.
Its maybe hard to understand how valuable salt was in the middle age. But just to give a hint, salt stood for 1/3 of Polands national income during the 14-century. And made it possible for the Polish king Casimir III to create the Krakow Academy. But even if the mine was so important and produced 7-8 000 tons of salt yearly in the end of the Middle age it was still a seasonal work.
As a result the mine in the end of the 15-century just had four shaft and one level. But this was to change quickly. During the 16-century the search for salt under the first level started. The mine expanded quickly and during the 17-century there was al ready three shafts. The mine continued to expand and is to day 325 meters deep with 9 different level with shafts covering 245 kilometers. Today the mine is visited by 2 miljon visitors a year. Who like you follow in the steps of Nicolaus Copernicus who visited the mine in 1493. So its size and history makes the Wieliczka Salt Mine to a cool underground experience. Don’t miss it when you visit Krakow go and buy your tickets here! You will not get disappointed.
How to get there
When we visited Wieliczka Salt Mine we didn’t know how to get the best experience out self. So we bought a guided tour out from Krakow. It was an easy and comfortable way to see the mine and the pick up was close to Mercure Krakow Stare Miasto where we stayed.