Salina Turda Salt Mine in Romania
Salt. It’s on each restaurant desk and in most each residence. We attain for the shaker with out regard for its provenance – the place it comes from, the way it’s processed, or the means by which it arrives on grocery retailer cabinets. Within the twenty first century salt is an considerable, cheap commodity that we take with no consideration. But it wasn’t at all times so.
Although there isn’t any written documentation to show using salt in prehistoric occasions, it’s generally accepted that salt will need to have been an indispensable ingredient in japanese Europe way back to 6,600 B.C.. As hunter-gatherer cultures started shifting to extra advanced financial methods based mostly on farming and animal husbandry, salt would have been required to keep up the well being of livestock, course of milk, tan leather-based, protect and season meals. Salt was inconsistently distributed throughout the area and by the Center to Late Bronze Ages (sixteenth to the thirteenth centuries B.C.), salt-rich communities have been exporting to salt-poor areas in far southeastern Transylvania, west to the Hungarian Plain, and certain so far as the Balkan peninsula.
The primary written data of salt manufacturing and commerce in japanese Europe appeared in the course of the Medieval Ages. A doc issued by the Hungarian chancellery in 1075 mentions a salt customized home “within the citadel known as Turda” and in a subsequent doc dated 1271 “the salt mine in Turda” was provided to the Head of the Catholic Church of Transylavania. Within the spring of 1552, a report made by royal inspectors known as the salt mine of Turda a very powerful in Transylvania. Certainly, the salt deposits on this a part of the Transilvanian plateau cowl an space of about 17 sq. miles and common 820 ft in depth, with some deposits being almost 4,000 ft thick!
To my delight, I discovered that the Salina Turda Salt Mine, which closed down in 1932, had been reopened as a vacationer attraction in 1992. On my final day in Cluj-Napoca I hopped on a mini-bus for the 35-minute experience to Turda, the place I caught one of many shuttle buses that run constantly between the city middle and the mine. After a brief briefing by an worker who confirmed me a big map and advised the most effective path to take, I started a protracted climb down by a tunnel that may have been bored by an enormous mole. Because the temperature plummeted, the partitions started to sweat, reworking them into black mirrors. Fascinated, I reached out to the touch the slick floor and recoiled, repulsed by the clammy, oily really feel of the weeping black salt.
On the backside of the steps the tunnel widened into the Franz Josef Gallery, a horizontal passage that was accomplished in 1870 to facilitate the motion of salt to the floor. Being cautious to not slip on the polished salt flooring, I adopted passageways that branched off to echo chambers and rooms displaying historic extraction and transport machines, ultimately arriving on the Rudolf Mine, the final space that was actively excavated at Turda. A wood walkway, minimize right into a ledge on the prime of the cavern, supplied a chicken’s eye view of the 138-foot deep rectangular excavation.
Fairly than undergo lengthy traces ready for the one elevator, I opted for the 172 steps that led right down to the ground of the mine, the place households have been having fun with an amusement park full with mini-bowling, mini-golf, merry-go-round, youngsters’s playground, billiard tables, and Ferris wheel. Off to 1 aspect I discovered a second statement platform overlooking the bell-shaped Terezia Mine, which plunges an extra 393 ft and options an underground lake with rowboats.
Although most guests have been there for the leisure, I used to be fascinated by the geology of the mine. Salt stalactites hanging from the ceiling develop to just about ten ft in size earlier than breaking off from their weight. The sheer partitions are zebra-striped in shades of black, gray, and amber, proof that layers of evaporated salt have been laid down over eons as inland seas alternately flooded and receded from japanese Europe. Plate tectonics folded and tilted the salt layers, creating a captivating sample of stripes and wavy traces that was uncovered when the mines have been excavated. These geologic forces occurred deep underground, thus the salt at Salina Turda is exceptionally pure, testing at greater than 99% sodium chloride. Due to its purity, researchers theorize that along with being utilized by the local people and mined on an industrial scale for export and commerce, salt from the Turda mine was additionally an unique good with a extremely symbolic worth. Having the sources to personal a product that was as worthwhile as gold implied energy, vitality, reference to sacred locations, and even immortality.
Salt has lengthy been utilized in spiritual ceremonies. Till current occasions, a small quantity of salt was positioned on the lips of a child being baptized within the Catholic Church. In Leonardo da Vinci’s well-known portray, The Final Supper, Judas Iscariot has spilled the salt, which is taken into account to represent dangerous luck and/or evil. From this comes the follow of throwing a little bit of the white stuff over our left shoulder every time salt is spilled, an motion believed to thrust back the satan. The bible is rife with symbolic references to salt: Lot’s spouse was turned to a pillar of salt when she regarded again at Sodom and Gomorrah and Jesus known as his disciples salt of the earth. Buddhists consider that salt repels evil spirits and Jews nonetheless dip their bread in salt on the Sabbath when passing the bread across the desk after the Kiddush. Salt was extensively used to solid spells within the japanese European folklore custom and continues to be thought of a magical substance within the Wicca faith.
As Margaret Visser has mentioned in her guide, A lot Relies upon On Dinner:
“Salt is the one rock instantly consumed by man. It corrodes however preserves, desiccates however is wrested from the water. It has fascinated man for hundreds of years not solely as a substance he prized and was prepared to labour to acquire, but additionally as a generator of poetic and of mythic that means. The contradictions it embodies solely intensify its energy and its hyperlinks with expertise of the sacred.”
Given salt’s lengthy historical past with the sacred, changing the Turda mines to an amusement park struck me as barely profane. I shared my ideas with one other customer as I used to be ready in line to exit and discovered that the mine additionally serves as a medical remedy facility. The fixed air temperature, digital lack of allergens, presence of aerosol salt particles, and predominance of optimistic ions within the air have been discovered to have a healing impact for sufferers with extreme respiratory circumstances, a lot of whom are youngsters. The amusement park was put in to entertain youngsters who should spend lengthy hours respiration the air on the backside of the mine. As I climbed to the floor I breathed deeply, filling my lungs with positively ionized air, on the off-chance that the ancients who believed within the magical properties of salt knew one thing we don’t.
Methods to go to the Salina-Turda Salt Mine in Turda, Romania:
Turda may be reached from Cluj-Napoca by mini-vans that depart hourly from the nook of Piata Mihai Viteazu and Strada Ion Popescu Voitesti. The price is 35 Lei (about $10 USD) and the journey takes roughly 35 minutes. The shuttle bus from Turda to the mine is roughly $2 USD every approach. The mine is open seven days per week, from 9 a.m. to five p.m., with the final entry allowed at 4 p.m. Admission is roughly $6 USD per particular person for adults, $3 USD per particular person for youngsters and college students, and about $3.60 USD for retirees.
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