This Poland salt mine, where 'everything is edible,' is among the first UNESCO World Heritage sites

Above ground, the quiet town of Wieliczka in southern Poland gives little indication of the extraordinary world hidden beneath it.

Deep underground lies a sprawling labyrinth shaped by generations of miners, a place where walls, floors, sculptures and even entire chapels are carved from rock salt.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine began operating in the 13th century, when miners started extracting what was then considered “white gold.” Commercial salt production continued until 1996, leaving behind more than 700 years of mining history.

But not everything hidden is meant to be forgotten.

Some places survive because the people who created them left more than empty tunnels behind.

They left tools, sculptures, places of worship and traces of their everyday lives, turning a working mine into a record of how an underground community lived, struggled and believed.

The journey into Wieliczka begins with a descent into the mine, where daylight slowly disappears and the air becomes noticeably cold.

“Each time I go to the mine, I lick the walls, and I encourage you to lick those too,” our guide, Katarzyna Kubicz-Andryszak, says with a laugh as the group made its way underground.

The temperature inside remains at around 17 to 18 degrees Celsius, providing an almost air-conditioned escape from the summer heat above.

The mine has nine levels, around 245 kilometers of underground galleries and a deepest point of 327 meters, almost enough to contain the Eiffel Tower standing upright.

Yet only about two percent of this vast “salt labyrinth” is open to ordinary visitors. The regular tourist route stretches for about 3.5 kilometers and reaches a depth of approximately 135 meters.

Along the route, wooden supports, old pulleys, mining tools and underground transport systems show how salt-mining techniques developed over the centuries, from the medieval period until operations ended in the 1990s.

But the miners did not excavate salt alone.

In every passage, they also left behind pieces of their lives.

The wooden structures that supported the chambers remain as reminders of the dangers they faced every day. Miners had to listen carefully for unusual sounds from the timber and rock above them, as these could signal ceiling collapse in the area.

“That was the best alarm system because when the miners heard the sound, they knew they were in danger and there was a serious risk that the roof might collapse on them,” Kubicz-Andryszak said.

“So the best alarm system was: run away, leave the place immediately.”

Despite the darkness and danger, the miners found room for art.

Among the sculptures inside the mine is a figure of Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer and mathematician who developed the heliocentric model showing that Earth and the other planets revolve around the sun.

“We’d like to think that he was the first famous tourist to the mine because, with time, he became the most famous Polish astronomer,” Kubicz-Andryszak said.

The sculpture, she added, was created by one of the miners using only a hammer and took more than a year to complete.

As visitors walk through the narrow passages, the presence of salt is unmistakable. It can be seen in the walls, smelled in the cool underground air and, according to the guide, even tasted.

After touching part of the wall and tasting the salt from her fingertips, the guide smiled and declared: “Pure salt. Everything is edible.”

Visitors were invited to try it themselves.

The mine’s most breathtaking chamber, however, is not simply an underground tourist attraction.

More than 100 meters beneath the surface stands St. Kinga’s Chapel, a vast underground place of worship created and decorated largely by miners.

From the floor and altar to the sculptures and biblical scenes on the walls, nearly everything was carved from rock salt.

The chapel includes images of saints and a salt-carved interpretation of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. Even its large chandeliers were made using carefully polished salt crystals, causing the entire chamber to shimmer under the lights.

The chapel demonstrates how faith became part of life underground.

Faced with the constant dangers of falling rocks, fires and collapsing tunnels, the miners built spaces where they could pray before beginning their work.

According to the Wieliczka Salt Mine administration, the artworks were created by the miners themselves, proof that even amid exhausting and dangerous labor, they still found space for spirituality, beauty and imagination.

A salt statue of St. John Paul II also stands inside the chapel.

The Polish pope, born Karol Wojtyła in nearby Wadowice, visited the mine before becoming pope. The sculpture was later created in his honor, preserving his image in the same material that sustained generations of Polish miners.

In 1978, Wieliczka became one of the first sites placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

UNESCO recognizes the mine for its outstanding record of European salt-mining techniques and traditions spanning several centuries.

Today, nearly two million visitors from around the world descend into the historic mine every year.

They come to see an underground world made from salt. But what they discover is also a story about people.

For centuries, salt from Wieliczka helped sustain communities and supported Poland’s economy.

As miners removed it from the earth, they created enormous underground spaces, and filled them with their tools, memories, fears, faith and art.

The Wieliczka Salt Mine shows that when history is protected and carefully preserved, even what was once buried in darkness can continue to benefit the generations living above it.

Because not everything hidden are meant to disappear. — LA, GMA News