Salina Turda

Salina Turda is a salt mine turned inside out into a cathedral of empty space. For centuries miners cut downward into a vast salt body beneath the Transylvanian town of Turda, and what they left behind are chambers so large that the eye struggles to measure them: pale walls banded in grey and cream rising far overhead. The first written mention of salt working here dates from 1271, though extraction began earlier, and production continued without real interruption until 1932.

Each chamber has its own character. The Rudolf mine, a rectangular hall about 80 metres long, 50 wide and 40 high, is reached down 172 steps; salt stalactites up to three metres long hang from parts of the old workings. The Terezia mine is a great bell-shaped void about 90 metres high and nearly as wide, its floor flooded by an underground lake with a small island that visitors can row around. The conical Iosif mine, over 100 metres deep, is known for its powerful echo. Along the connecting galleries survives a crivac of 1881 — the winch that hauled salt to the surface, still standing in its original place and a rare survivor of its kind.

After the mine closed it served as an air-raid shelter during the Second World War and later as a cheese store. It opened to visitors in 1992, and a rebuilding in 2008–2010 turned the Rudolf hall into something between an underground theatre and a fairground: a 20-metre Ferris wheel, an amphitheatre with heated seats, mini-golf and bowling lanes. Some find the playground incongruous; others see it as the stage that makes the scale legible. Either way, the chambers themselves remain the reason to come, and the salt air is also used for halotherapy in the Gizela mine. Around 600,000 people visited in 2017.

Getting there

The mine lies in the Durgău–Valea Sărată area on the edge of Turda, about 2.4 km from the town centre, in Cluj County. The nearest airport is Avram Iancu Cluj International Airport (CLJ), about 23 km away; Cluj-Napoca, the regional capital, is the usual base.