In the upper part of the chamber is the monument of Marshal Józef Pilsudski, carved in rock-salt by the miner sculptor Stanislaw Aniol in 1997. The founder of the Polish Legions in World War I and the Polish Commander-in-Chief visited the Wieliczka mine in 1919.
The working resulted from the excavation of two adjacent blocks of green salt in the early nineteenth century. When in the 1830s the Austrians prepared a tourist route, they joined the twin chambers with a ten-metre tunnel. They also built wooden stairs and a platform, and filled the bottom of the chamber with brine. Particularly attractive was passing through the tunnel, with the accompaniment of fireworks and the music played by the Saline orchestra. In the 1890s the roof of the working was strengthened with the basket casing. Of interest in the chamber is also the eighteenth-century figure of St. John Nepomucen, the patron of the drowning.
There you go... 😉
Mr Mike www.mineexplorer.org.uk