The Royal Salt Mines of Wieliczka and Bochnia

A third of the royal budget

It began with boiling rather than digging. As far back as the Neolithic, brine seeping to the surface here was collected and evaporated over open fires in long clay vessels; traces of those installations were found near Wieliczka after the Second World War. When the natural springs gave out, people started sinking deeper wells. At Bochnia this led to rock salt in 1248 and to mining proper in 1251, which makes it the oldest salt mine in Poland. The same seam was soon found under Wieliczka.

Both mines formed a single royal enterprise, the Kraków Saltworks, and stayed that way from the thirteenth century until the First Partition of Poland in 1772, after which they passed to Austrian administration. Under Casimir the Great salt brought in roughly a third of state revenue, and the saltworks statute of 1368 set out how the mines were run and how salt was sold. It went as far as Hungary and Ruthenia. The whole operation answered to a royally appointed administrator based at the Saltworks Castle in Wieliczka, which now houses the Kraków Saltworks Museum.

Miners sorted what they cut into three grades: green salt, clouded by clay, spiza salt, crystalline but sandy, and szybik salt, the purest, in large transparent crystals. At Bochnia the output was shaped into cylinders weighing up to two tonnes — easy to roll and hard to steal. Provision for the workforce came early: a bath house was ordered at Wieliczka in 1289, a miners' hospital opened at Bochnia in 1357, and Casimir the Great founded one at Wieliczka in 1363.

Fourteen million years in the making

The salt is about fourteen million years old. In the Miocene this area lay under the Paratethys sea; a cooling climate and growing glaciers dropped ocean levels by several dozen metres, and the tectonic uplift that raised the Carpathians cut the basin off from open water. In a hot climate it dried out and salt precipitated on the floor, a process reckoned to have taken fifteen to twenty thousand years.

That is why the two deposits look so different. Wieliczka's is around ten kilometres long and six hundred to fifteen hundred metres wide, with a block-salt mass thrust over the bedded salt. Bochnia's is narrow — some two hundred metres — three and a half kilometres long and set almost vertically. That forced miners into tall, cramped chambers and made ventilation the central problem for centuries: lack of air was more dangerous here than collapse, and men fainted and fell from the wooden platforms.

Underground at Wieliczka

The mine has nine levels. The first, Bono, is sixty-four metres down; the lowest is three hundred and twenty-seven. Passages linking some three thousand workings add up to close to three hundred kilometres, and the total void comes to seven and a half million cubic metres. The visitor route uses a fraction of that: about three kilometres, twenty chambers on levels one to three, so between sixty-four and a hundred and thirty-five metres down. It means close to eight hundred steps and two to three hours on your feet.

The best-known part is St Kinga's Chapel, an underground church roughly fifty-four metres long, eighteen wide and twelve high, cut a hundred and one metres below the surface. The floor was carved from a single block of salt, the chandeliers are made of salt crystals, and the main altar is the work of a miner, Józef Markowski. Reliefs on the walls show scenes from the New Testament, and since 1999 a salt monument to John Paul II has stood here. The acoustics are good enough that concerts are held in it.

Older still is St Anthony's Chapel, consecrated in 1698 — the oldest surviving chapel in the mine, Baroque, with a chancel, a nave and a vestibule into which, for want of room, the pulpit was fitted. Along the way you also pass the Copernicus chamber, the Casimir the Great chamber with an eighteenth-century horse whim, the Weimar chamber named after Goethe's home town — Goethe was among the first visitors — and the Michałowice chamber, thirty-five metres high. In the Wessel chamber, a hundred and thirty-five metres down, an underground rehabilitation centre has operated since 1997: the microclimate holds steady at fourteen to sixteen degrees, with air rich in sodium chloride, calcium and magnesium.

Underground at Bochnia

Bochnia is older and feels entirely different — a workplace rather than a sculpture gallery. It goes down four hundred and sixty-eight metres, has nine levels, and is organised around the August gallery, which runs almost three kilometres east to west at depths between a hundred and seventy-six and two hundred and twelve metres. Its first section was cut between 1723 and 1743 to a design by Johann Gottfried Borlach, whose achievement was to straighten and level the mine's haulage routes. A train called Kuba runs along it now, named after the last horse to work here, which did so into the 1960s.

The largest chamber is Ważyn, named after a saltworks official, Andrzej Ważyński: two and a half thousand square metres about two hundred and fifty metres down, with a football pitch that hosts tournaments and a treatment centre. Salt was taken from it from 1697 until the 1950s, after which it was enlarged by machine. It holds fourteen to sixteen degrees at around seventy per cent humidity. Bochnia also offers a boat crossing of a flooded chamber, a nature route, an expedition into the „Old Mountains“ and the „Solny Świadek“ route opened in 2023; midnight mass is celebrated in its own St Kinga's Chapel.

Industrial extraction ended at Bochnia in 1990 and at Wieliczka on 30 June 1996. One thing survived intact: a working steam drive for the shaft hoists, started up occasionally, and unique in Europe.

Getting there

• To Wieliczka — some fifteen kilometres southeast of Kraków: by agglomeration rail from Kraków Główny, by regional bus, or by road on national route 94.
• To Bochnia — forty kilometres further east, on the A4 motorway and the Kraków–Tarnów railway; the Campi shaft is a walk from the station.
• Both together — only feasible in one day at a rush; better to split them or pick one.
• The Saltworks Castle — in the middle of Wieliczka, minutes from the Daniłowicz shaft, so it pairs with the mine at no extra travel.

Worth knowing

Wieliczka was on the original 1978 World Heritage List, alongside the historic centre of Kraków. From 1989 to 1998 it sat on the List of World Heritage in Danger: artificial ventilation introduced in the late nineteenth century had raised humidity and was threatening the salt sculptures. On 23 June 2013 the site was extended to include the Bochnia mine and the Saltworks Castle and renamed the Royal Salt Mines in Wieliczka and Bochnia. Wieliczka has been a Polish Monument of History since 1994, Bochnia since 2000.

It is cool and damp underground all year, so a layer is worth having even in August. Visits are in guided groups, and Wieliczka is genuinely busy — its record year brought close to two million people, so book ahead, particularly for a tour in a language other than Polish. Part of the Wieliczka route is wheelchair accessible, though not all of it. Bochnia is quieter and more forgiving of turning up on the day.

How to get there and practical info

Location

Wieliczka and Bochnia, Lesser Poland Voivodeship, east of Kraków

UNESCO World Heritage since

1978 (Wieliczka); since 2013 including Bochnia and the Saltworks Castle

Monument of History

Wieliczka since 1994, Bochnia since 2000

Worked

Bochnia 1251–1990, Wieliczka from the 13th century to 1996

Depth

Wieliczka 327 m (9 levels), Bochnia 468 m

Wieliczka visitor route

about 3 km, 20 chambers, depth 64–135 m, close to 800 steps

Temperature underground

a steady 14–16 °C in both mines

Time needed

two to three hours per mine

Current hours and tickets

Wieliczka Salt Mine, Bochnia Salt Mine

When to go