Wieliczka

Salt was produced at Wieliczka from upwelling brine as early as Neolithic times, and the deposit grew in importance after the Polish capital moved to Kraków in the 11th century. The Mongol invasion of the 13th century halted progress, and German settlers who came afterwards called the place Gross Salz, "great salt", from which the Polish names Wielka Sól and later Wieliczka derive. After rock salt was found in 1252, shafts were sunk, and in 1290 the future king Przemysł II granted the town its privileges. The mine belonged to the royal salt company, the Żupy Krakowskie, and it brought huge revenues to the state.

A plague in 1651 killed much of the population, and during the Swedish Deluge of 1655–60 the mine was plundered and burned. In 1772 Wieliczka passed to Austria, and apart from a brief spell in the Duchy of Warsaw after 1809 it remained in Galicia until 1918. German, Hungarian, Croatian and Transylvanian miners settled here, Chopin visited in 1828, and in the 1846 Kraków uprising miners seized control of the mines. Industrialisation turned the town into a small city with miners' colonies and its own power plants.

German troops entered on 7 September 1939. The Jewish population of around 1,500 was persecuted, a ghetto in the Klasno district held as many as 11,000 people, and in August 1942 the Jewish population was rounded up and about 700 were shot in a nearby forest; very few survived. Salt production ended in 1996 because of falling prices and flooding. The mine was on UNESCO's first World Heritage list in 1978, and the Saltworks Castle was added in 2013.

The mine is the town's culture as much as its industry. Generations of miners carved statues, reliefs and whole chapels from the rock salt, among them the Chapel of St Kinga, named after the 13th-century Hungarian princess who became Grand Duchess of Poland and is a patron saint of Poland. Its chambers have drawn visitors for centuries — Copernicus, Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Chopin, Mendeleyev and Baden-Powell among them — and they are still used for concerts, weddings and private events. In 1995 the film music of Zbigniew Preisner was recorded in one of the chapels.

Above ground, the town keeps a strong Catholic and folk tradition. Wieliczka and the nearby village of Lednica Górna are among the last places where Siuda Baba is performed on Easter Monday: a man dressed as a ragged woman with a soot-blackened face goes from door to door with companions in traditional Kraków costume, collecting donations. The old wooden church of St Sebastian and St Clement's Church reflect centuries of parish life tied to the mine.

The town's football club is Górnik — "miner" — Wieliczka, and the miners' heritage is visible in the street names, the colonies of workers' housing and the Kraków Saltworks Museum in the castle.

About 28,400 people lived in the town in mid-2025, and around 70,000 in the wider municipality, which since 1999 has formed part of the Kraków metropolitan area. The town lies in a valley between two ridges, with the A4 motorway close by, and Kraków is less than half an hour away by train.

The salt mine remains central to the local economy even though it no longer produces salt commercially, and the tourist trade supports guides, restaurants, shops and guesthouses in the centre. Wieliczka is also the headquarters of the Polish sportswear company 4F. Its residents have included Magdalena Bendzisławska, a 17th-century barber-surgeon who was probably Poland's first woman surgeon, and, today, the chess grandmaster Jan-Krzysztof Duda.

The historic centre around the Market Square is busy with visitors by day, especially in summer, while the newer housing estates and the villages absorbed into the town in the 20th century are quiet and residential. The interwar years added new residential districts and absorbed nearby villages to house a growing population.

Wieliczka eats in the style of Kraków and Lesser Poland. Kotlet schabowy, a thinly pounded pork loin cutlet coated in breadcrumbs, is one of the region's own dishes, now popular across Poland, and the town's restaurants serve it alongside pierogi, bigos and soups such as żurek, a sour soup made from fermented flour and served with potatoes, egg, bacon and white sausage. The obwarzanek krakowski, a braided ring of bread boiled and sprinkled with salt and sesame or poppy seeds before baking, is the street snack of neighbouring Kraków.

Salt itself is the town's signature product. Bags of salt from the mine are sold in shops and stands around the entrance, and the Tourist Route includes a restaurant deep underground, among the chambers.

On Fat Thursday, before Lent, the favourite sweets are pączki, Polish doughnuts, and faworki, thin fried pastries; at Easter, families sit down to a festive breakfast of cold meats, żurek and cakes.