WIELICZKA SALT MINE
EXCURSION & GALA DINNER
In 1978 the Wieliczka Salt Mine was included by UNESCO in the first list of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage. It is the oldest, still operating factories in Poland, which is connected with Miocene history of the so-called Carpathian Foredeep. This Paratethys basin has been filled both by full marine and restricted marine deposits including different kind of evaporites, mainly anhydrite-gypsum, sulfur-bearing and chloride facies, and the last one containing rock salt with anhydrite and clay-anhydrite rocks. The salt deposit of Wieliczka consists generally of two parts – lower one is developed as strongly folded salt layers (called stratified or bedded) and upper one which is developed as synsedimentary coarse breccia (boulder deposit) with salty clays (zuber). They were formed due to submarine mass movements and formed olistostrome-like bodies within tectonically active basin slope on the front of the Carpathian orogenic arc.