Turda salt mine, viral on CNN through the eyes of British photographer

The salt mine from Turda, also known in Romanian as Salina Turda in Cluj county, tapped CNN’s attention, which featured it as a story highlight on Wednesday after taking it over from The Spaces, a digital publication exploring new ways to live and work.

The initiative actually started from the British photographer Richard John Seymour, who has recently traveled to Salina Turda ‘in his quest to document human-altered landscapes’.

The editor reports that the 2000-year-old salt mine in Transylvania has been converted into a theme park, as visitors can play mini-golf, bowl and row around its underground lake.

“Deep in the Transylvanian countryside lies an ancient salt mine dating back over two millennia.

Salina Turda filled the coffers of Hungarian kings and Habsburg emperors — especially during the 13th century, when salt was more valuable than gold — and sustained the local community for centuries.

Today Salina Turda has become an unlikely tourist attraction, with thousands of visitors descending its vertical shafts each year to play mini-golf, go bowling and row around its underground lake. This submerged wonderland even has a healing center for people with lung conditions,” reads their story.

In July last year, Salina Turda opened a new mine, Ghizela, sheltering leaning stalactites and deposits of salt cubic crystals, after previously in June it had been launched on Google Street View, thus providing a virtual tour on Google Maps.

More about the salt mine’s beauties here.