This afternoon we planned on visiting the famous Wielicza Salt Mine, our guided tour was set up for 15:30. We therefore had the luxury of time on our hands and decided that what we would do was go into the city centre and find something to look at, touristically speaking.

Once breakfast was done and we were in town, we decided that as it was so hot, we would enjoy some time indoors and the nearest building to us that housed anything of interest was the the Gallery of 19C Polish art in  the Sukiennice (Cloth Hall)in the main square. As it was a Sunday it also was a free entry (though to be fair that might also be the case during the week). There was a lot of art on display but not all of it was to our taste – for instance I’m not a great fan of portraiture, whilst I recognise and acknowledge the skills, they are still for the most part, boring to me. I do like 19C romantic paintings and there were some nice ones but the two I have selected here are because the first reminds me of the Skagen school which we so liked in Denmark and the other is Monet-like (see pictures).

Back to the flat for some lunch and then we walked down to the main shopping complex called Galleria, through which and on the other side  bus 304 was waiting. On Polish buses you by the ticket on board ( basically £1.00 for a journey of up to 50 minutes) and then you time stamp it and you’re good to go. We arrived in plenty of time for our 15:30 slot so I went to see if we could change them for the 15:00 time slot, which we could and that is when we went down.

The thing that appeals about this salt mine is that it has been operational in one form or another since Neolithic times. Then, salt-saturated brine came to the surface to be harvested by our ancestors but eventually this convenient source dried up and sometime in the 1200’s, people started digging tunnels to extract the salt, so that today there are no less than 300km of tunnels on 3 levels, of which we got to see less than 1%. At one time, salt extraction was a hugely profitable business, salt was almost worth as much as gold and this mine was literally, a gold mine. Here is a URL giving more information:-

For the average tourist, there are two worries when visiting the mine 1) can I cope with the 800 steps descending (easy as they are in sections, and each section is of 6 steps at a time) and 2) will I be cold at the constant temperature of 16°C ? ( this is more of a female question in my experience but my lot were quite happy!!). I’ve included a few photographs but it is hard, with an ordinary digital camera, to capture the breathtaking extent of the place. Some of the chambers were vast, 33m high and huge, big enough to house churches and concert venues and a restaurant. There were lots of rock salt carvings and in general, tons of things to look at. We thoroughly enjoyed the trip and were very relieved to learn that the 130m decent by stair was the only hardship, the ascent was via a lift and back into the 37°C late afternoon temperatures – what a contrast!