The Wieliczka salt mine and the cathedral carved in salt

There are not many places where you can lick the walls of a cathedral. In the Wieliczka salt mine, outside Kraków, it is not exactly encouraged, but it is tempting, and people do. The walls, the floor, the altar and the sculptures of the great underground Chapel of St Kinga are carved out of rock salt, and they taste of it.

The mine is often described as one of the oldest salt mines in the world. Salt was produced here from brine springs long before anyone dug for it, and the first documents that mention the place go back to the eleventh century. Underground mining began in the thirteenth century, and from then until 1996, when commercial extraction stopped, the miners of Wieliczka followed the salt down and along through the rock, leaving behind them a labyrinth of shafts, galleries and chambers on nine levels. For centuries the mine was a royal enterprise, run as part of the Kraków Salt Works.

A legend about a ring

Every mine needs a patron saint, and Wieliczka's comes with a story. Kinga was a Hungarian princess, daughter of a king of Hungary, who in the thirteenth century was betrothed to a Polish prince. Before leaving home, the legend goes, she threw her engagement ring into a salt mine shaft in Hungary. When she arrived in Poland she told the miners at Wieliczka to dig, and when they broke into a lump of rock salt they found her ring inside it.

It is a lovely story and nobody need take it literally. But Kinga became the patron saint of Polish salt miners, she was canonised in 1999, and the greatest of the chapels in the mine is named after her.

The chapel a hundred metres down

The Chapel of St Kinga lies about a hundred metres below the surface. It is the largest of the many chapels carved in the mine. Miners began work on it in 1896, and they carried on, with interruptions, until 1963, cutting a hall the size of a church out of the solid salt. Everything is carved, from the floor and the altar to the sculptures and the reliefs on the walls; among the sculptures is one of Pope John Paul II. The reliefs show scenes from the life of St Kinga and the Bible, and one of them is a Last Supper modelled on Leonardo da Vinci's, carved in the salt. Most of this was the work not of professional sculptors but of miners, in their spare time. You can see it in the work: it is skilled, careful, devout and a little homely, and all the more touching for it.

The mine was among the very first places to be inscribed on UNESCO's World Heritage List, in 1978, one of a dozen sites on the original list.

What a visit is like

A visit takes you along the tourist route, which passes through some twenty chambers on three of the mine's levels. Along the way are many smaller chapels carved by the miners, each a little different, and the air underground is cool and still. The Chapel of St Kinga is the climax, and it is worth taking a moment there, after the guide has finished, to look round in silence.

Tours that include Wieliczka

Explore Worldwide's seven-night Highlights of Poland is the holiday in the catalogue that lists Wieliczka by name. Its places include Warsaw, Wroclaw, Zagan, Ksiaz Castle, Krakow and the Kazimierz District, Wieliczka, and Gdansk and Sopot. It has departures in every month from March to September.

Two other Explore Worldwide holidays begin in Kraków, though neither lists Wieliczka. The seven-night Krakow to Budapest Adventure goes on into Slovakia and Hungary, with Lesnica, Spisske, Tatranska Lomnica, Starý Smokovec, Hrebienok, Kosice, Tokaj, Tard and Budapest among its places, and has departures in every month from May to October. The seven-night Hiking in the Polish Carpathians heads south into the mountains, with Babia Gora National Park, Zawoja, Zverovka, Zakopane, the Dunajec Gorge, Szczawnica and Kroscienko, and has departures in every month from May to September.

Wear comfortable shoes, take a layer for the cool air, and leave the temptation to lick the walls to your own conscience.