Wieliczka Salt Mine
These polish salt mines are on my list of places to see before I die. They are completely fascinating. I first heard of the Wieliczka mine on a history channel special about odd places in the world. Its funny that places so capture a persons interest.
Wieliczka is in the town of Krokaw in southern Poland. Polish people began to mine salt since the late 13th century. The mine is a vast labriynth of over 200 km of underground passages, connecting more than 2000 excavation chambers on 9 underground levels extending down to 327m.
Miners spent most of their lives down in the mines. Spending all waking hours in the caverounous mines, they began to carve sculptures, chapels, religious icons...etc out of the salt deposits. Consequently, the mine contains numerous underground churches, altars, reliefs, and life-size or larger statues. The quality of this art is amazing. They are gorgeus like they are from the Cathedrals in rome.
It also houses an underground museum a sanatorium for people suffering from respiratory ailments, a soccer field, dance hall, huge dinning hall and other special rooms. The largest of the chapels is call ed the Chapel of the Blessed Kinga. The Chapel is 101 meters below the surface... over 50 meters long, 15 meters wide, 12 meters high, with a volume of 10,000 cubic meters.
I just hope, I can see it before I die....its on my BUCKET LIST...
2 comments:
that sounds so cool. :D
it would be a wonderful place to visit.
I do wonder though, wouldn't it be tiring for them not to see the sun for really long periods of time? I don't think I could stand it haha.
Wow, that does sound interesting. I may add that to my list too. Like Daisy said, being down there all the time must've been horrible...kinda reminds me of that movie "The Descent"!
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