Wieliczka - salt mine in Poland - PHOTOS

Baku. 26 May. REPORT.AZ/ Today, hardly anyone has something to remind the name of the Polish town of Wieliczka, but should then add "salt mine" as soon say all that they had heard about them.

Today the mine is a network of mines, leaving seven levels deep into the ground. The deepest point in the mine at a depth of 335 m, and the total length of the galleries about 300 km. However, tourists are open to access only three levels, but it's enough to capture the imagination of man.

15 million years ago in present day Poland was Miocene sea which is a result of climate change and led to the boiling brine deposits in the region. However, the interesting story of how people have found here the salt, or rather her legend. According to this legend the Hungarian princess Kinga was to marry King Boleslaw the Fifth of Krakow. Marrying, King asked his father - King Belo, to give her as a dowry salt mine since before the salt was worth its weight in gold. Father fulfilled the desire of his beloved daughter, but she could not take her dowry with her. Then she throws her ring into the mine and went to Krakow. However, before reaching the town, she orders his subjects to dig a hole and discovers salt. Moreover, workers find her ring, which she threw in Hungary. Since Poland became a rich country, and mined salt allowed to transform the country. Today, King, canonized, is the patroness of miners.

Although today the salt is no longer so precious as gold, precious Now here are tourists who are all conditions. They can just take a walk on the mines, breathing perfectly clean air in which no germs can live like a miner and to get a little bit of salt, and can just spend a week in a special sanatorium, which will cost 1,800 Polish zlotys (about 515 manat).

However, the mine is remarkable not only that. It has one of the deepest in the world of watches, bearing the name of the holy King. There's even arrange weddings and other celebrations. By the way, a young man working in the mine and the future Pope John Paul II, which is very revered and the miners themselves who made a monument of ... salt. There is also a huge chandelier made of salt, and even a replica of the world famous da Vinci painting "The Last Supper." The artist performed it so well in the wall of the salt that, the removal of the painting, its depth is further increased, in 3D movies.

And yet there is underground lakes, the salinity of which is comparable to the salinity of the Dead Sea.

To list all the wonders of the mine, which resembles a journey to another planet is not enough of a single sheet of paper. There are many statues of various mountain structures hours as the miners were very religious people and they had every day to go down into the mine.

Report presents photo report from the underworld salt mine.