Poland Moves to Preserve Historic Wieliczka Salt Mine

WIELICZKA, Poland â€”  Long before Poland even existed as a nation, salt was being extracted from the abundant deposits in this town in the southern part of the country.

But now the world’s oldest continuously worked mine, which has been recognized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization as part of the world’s cultural heritage, is slowly being destroyed by natural forces, and Poland is mounting a major rescue effort to save it.

The history of the mine close to Krakow mirrors the history of the nation.

In medieval times it was Poland’s biggest enterprise, and Poland’s kings could finance armies by leasing the mine to noble families.

In the 19th Century, Austrian army officers escorted elegant ladies along the mine’s well-traveled tourist road or dance in the mine’s sumptuous subterranean ballrooms.

Tourist Attraction

Today Wielizcka Salt Mine still produces 200,000 tons of salt a year for use on tables, in bath preparations and in agricultural products.

It also is a major tourist attraction and houses a museum, underground rooms for treatment of asthmatics, conference rooms and a huge chapel where hundreds attend midnight Mass on Christmas Eve under chandeliers adorned by salt crystals.

But intrusion of water and the earth’s weight bearing down on the weaker salt rock is gradually collapsing this source of national pride.

So Communist Party officials have announced a 30-year, $100-million project to preserve the mine as a testament to the bravery and skill of the early miners who toiled hundreds of feet underground before the age of elevators, electric lamps and mechanical tools.

Also to be preserved is a wealth of underground sculpture, much of it religious, reflecting the religious fervor of the men who labored under such difficult and dangerous conditions.

Closing for Two Years

In July, officials announced that the mine will be closed to tourists for two years starting in October as part of the project, which is being carried out by the Ministry of Mining.

Preserving areas a commission has deemed to be of historical significance is the chief goal of the renovation, said Sylwester Warwas, head of the mine’s restoration department.

Also to be preserved are the underground tourist road and some areas not now open to the public, including a “crystal grotto� filled with salt crystals, each more than a foot long.

Warwas said workers will rescue chambers from collapse by building wooden retaining “cribs,� installing three-foot-long bolts to strengthen fragile walls or by using bricks and wire mesh masking.

Some unimportant chambers will be filled with sand to prevent subsidence that could damage valuable areas, while other historic chambers, previously filled in, will be excavated.

Most restoration is planned in areas 200 to 400 years old, because older sections are already damaged beyond repair.

The mine has more than 2,000 chambers and 190 miles of tunnels and galleries. About 300 chambers are slated for restoration.

One major project is repairing the Danilowicz shaft, sunk in the early 1600s, through which tourists now reach the mine in a creaky, three-level sardine can of an elevator.

The tourist route encompasses only about 1% of the mine but takes two to three hours to walk. Salt seems to hang in the air--touch your finger to the walls and then to your tongue and you can taste it.

Perhaps the most arresting artworks on the route are two chapels, representing a fraction of the 43 religious sites or sacred objects sculpted in the mine.

Dangerous Work

The smaller is St. Anthony’s chapel, built in 1689, where miners attended Mass daily before beginning work. The service was all the more important because miners never knew which workday might be their last. As many as 10% of the early miners were killed or maimed annually.

Hewn out of the rock in a dimly lit recess, the chapel has an intricately carved altar, statues of several saints and stone figures of kneeling monks.

But humidity has melted the salt carvings, giving the figures a wraith-like appearance.

With a theatrical flourish, a tour guide recently showed off the tour’s main attraction--the ornate Blessed Kinga Chapel, named for a Hungarian princess who wed King Boleslaw the Bashful.

Telling his tour group to face a pitch black abyss and watch for a legendary lost miner, the guide suddenly turned on lights to disclose the cathedral-sized chapel.

Its floors look like polished tiles, but closer inspection reveals they are carefully leveled solid rock into which a tile pattern has been carved.

The chapel, 330 feet underground, is primarily the work of three miner artisans over a 67-year period beginning in 1896, with the work being interrupted by two wars and the imposition of Stalinism after World War II. Its ceilings are 39 feet high and from the altar to the back wall it measures 180 feet.