Day 56 - Salt Mine

Finally managed to get out to the salt mine after a failed attempt the other day. Basically in years gone by, salt was an expensive commodity and accounted for about 30% of Polands GDP. Actually in Roman times, the soldiers use to be paid in salt. From the latin derivation of 'sal', from salt, comes the term 'salary'. Another useless bit of trivia.

So you get to go down into the salt mine which has been going for over 700 years. There are about 200km of tunnels and we went through about 3km. There were lots of chapels and chambers all over the place. Here is one of the main large ones. Pretty much the whole thing is made out of salt.



Here is a carving about 2m wide all out of salt in the Chappel above (left hand side). This is a copy of the Last Supper and is only 15cm deep at the maximum point.



Naturally with a place like this I'm down for photographic reference for future drawings. This whole place is salt so you stick your finger on the wall, into your mouth and naturally tastes like salt.



This is a life size carving all done in salt. Most of the carvings were actually done by miners who were commissioned at various stages in time. The mine itself has been a tourist attraction for about 200 years.