Turda Salt Mine
A medieval salt mine that has been a bomb shelter and a cheese store, and is now an enormous lit cavern with a boating lake at the bottom.
- How long to allow
- Two to three hours
- Best for
- Families, and rainy days
The background
Salt has been cut here since the Roman province of Dacia, and the workings you walk through are largely medieval and later. The mine ran commercially until 1932, when cheaper neighbours made it uneconomic, and it closed.
What happened next is the interesting part
In 1939 the town reopened it as an air-raid shelter. After the war local cheesemakers used it as a store, because it is cold, dark and dry all year. It opened to visitors in 1992.
What that history left is a set of chambers on a scale nothing prepares you for — the extraction galleries are vast, and the modern lighting installed for visitors makes them read like architecture rather than industry.
The lake
The Terezia chamber goes down about 120 metres and holds a shallow salt lake with rowing boats on it. There is also a Ferris wheel underground, which sounds like a joke until you see the ceiling it is turning under.
It is genuinely cold down there whatever the surface weather is doing. Take a layer.
Opening times and tickets
We do not publish opening hours or prices, because they change and a wrong time here is worse than none. The operator keeps the current details.
Official websiteTurda Salt Mine, Rimetea and Alba Iulia
The salt mine, the village under Piatra Secuiului and the citadel, in one guided day.
See this day trip