Natural and historic heritage of the Bochnia Salt Mine (South Poland)

The Bochnia Salt Mine, presented in this paper, is situated ca. 40 km E of Cracow, in the southern part of the Neogene Carpathian Foredeep, close to the Carpathian edge. In this region the rock-salt deposits formed as a result of the Late Miocene folding and local tectonic thickening of Badenian evaporites. The Bochnia deposit, situated in the almost vertical N limb of the Bochnia Anticline, stretches ca. 7 km WE, but only 15-200 m NS. Salt mining in Bochnia began in the thirteenth c. and continued until 1990. The historic part of the mine, since 1995 operated by a company supplying health and tourism services, is an officially listed monument of historic heritage. Legal protection also comprises 27 sites of key value for the geology of the deposit. These documentation sites record the whole profile of the evaporite series and the adjacent beds, main and minor tectonic structures, as well as mineralogical curiosities, such as fibrous halite and enterolithic anhydrite. For some years, efforts have been made to enter the Bochnia Salt Mine, in 2008 visited by over 140 000 tourists, on the UNESCO World List of Cultural and Natural Heritage