The Wieliczka Salt Mine · A Church Built a Hundred Metres Underground

The Wieliczka salt mine has been worked for more than seven hundred years; its galleries run for hundreds of kilometres and reach more than three hundred metres down. Miners carved chapels, chandeliers, altars and whole reliefs out of the salt rock.

There are underground lakes and long corridors, the air is dry and the temperature stays around ten degrees all year. Miners once prayed in the Chapel of St Kinga before going down; she is said to have dropped her ring into a Hungarian salt mine, and it travelled with the salt to Poland.

The deepest visitor route takes several hours. The guide says: the most valuable thing here is the thing you cannot take out.

Historical Mysteries / Kraków · Poland / 13th century