Salt Mine Wieliczka
The price includes:
- Pick up at your hotel/hostel
- Transport to Salt Mine
- English speaking guide
- Transport back to Krakow
- All fees and tickets included!
- Duration 4 hours
- Insurance
- Licensed bus for 8 people
The Wieliczka Salt Mine, nowadays practically on the southeast outskirts of Krakow, has been worked for 900 years. It used to be one of the world’s biggest and most profitable industrial establishments when common salt was commercially a medieval equivalent of today’s oil. Always a magnet, since the mid-18th century Krakow’s Wieliczka salt mine has become increasingly a tourist attraction in the first place. Today visitors walk underground for about 2,000m in the oldest part of the salt mine and see its subterranean museum, which takes three hours or so.
Nine centuries of mining in Wieliczka produced a total of some 200 kilometers of passages as well as 2,040 caverns of varied size. The tourist route starts 64 m deep and ends 135 m below the earth surface, where the world’s biggest museum of mining is located with the unique centuries-old equipment among its exhibits. Still below, some 210 m deep, there is a sanatorium for those suffering from asthma and allergy. Occasionally concerts and other events take place in the Wieliczka mine’s biggest chambers.
UNESCO has entered the Wieliczka Salt Mine in its World Heritage Register.
