EUROPE TO-DAY

Manawatu Standard, Volume LVIII, Issue 44, 20 January 1938, Page 2

EUROPE TO-DAY

A PALACE UNDERGROUND. And now for the wonders of Wielieza. It is a few miles from Cracow in Poland, a neighbourhood where salt beds laid down many millions of years ago when the sea washed the base of the uplifted Aljrs, extend in a belt of 25 miles long by a mile wide. In the nine centuries of their working the mines have been transformed to things of beauty. A lift now takos one down to them, and tlio gleaming corridors, miles long, lead to a labyrinth of caves and lakes. On the first level, which is reached by die lift, ther is a Polish inscription carved on one of tlye crystal walls. It reads “The Miner’s Life is Beautiful,’’ and a miner long ago carved it.

Down marble steps the visitor_ finds marble halls. The first of them is the Chapel of St. Anthony, with altars and a pulpit which miners carved close on 250 years ago. From this chapel the way leads down more polished steps and a widening corridor into what is called the Cathedral. It is a vast salt cavern from which the centuries have taken a toll of a million tons of rock salt, but it is carved like the older, smaller chapel with sculptures and bas-reliefs, and from the soaring roof hang great chandeliers, electrically lit.

There are other so-called cells, that of Lety with a stained-glass window; Miehalowice, 150 feet high ; Drozdowice, which has been converted into a museum where old wooden tools once employed to dig out the millions of tons of salt which Wielicza has yielded aie displayed. In the Komora Pilsudskiego, Pilsudski’s cell, is one of the larger subterranean lakes some 16 feet deep, and crossed by a raft. Blue and red fairy lights illumine its darkness.—(G).