Beneath the city of Wieliczka in Poland lies one of the most extraordinary sights in the world; a subterranean town made of salt.
This town is in the heart of a salt mine which goes down to over 300 metres below ground and has more than 112 kilometres of tunnels. All the elements that make up the town are built from salt, that is from sodium chloride in a crystalline state, which has a consistency similar to that of porous stone. Everything is made of rock-salt, from the pillars to the lamp-posts, from the streets to the bridges. There is everything here that you would find in any small town: a church decorated with basreliefs, a railway station, a throneroom, a ballroom, small lakes, wide specious streets. All that is the work of the miners who through decades of patient labour succeeded in completing labour succeeded in completing this colossal task.
Although there are other towns made of salt in both Poland and Austria, Wieliczka is the most complete and most perfect of them all. The salt mines there have been worked for over nine centuries.
Picture Credit : Google