Austria: Salzwelten Salzburg Salt Mine

Ever wonder why Salzburg is named the way it is and where all the baroque riches came from? It’s salt! 19km outside the city (in the border with Germany) lies Salzwelten Salzburg Salt Mine. It’s the world’s oldest salt mine with a history of salt mining dating back over 2,600 years to the Celtic era. It was Salzburg’s prince-archbishops, largely Wolf-Dietrich von Raitenau, who funded Baroque architecture with salt trade profits. For 90 min you can go in an awesome underground tour of the mine that is action packed – there is a train ride, there is walking on multiple levels of the mine, a boat ride on the underground salt lake, there’s underground crossing into Germany, and there are even thrill slides on your ass down a real miners’ shute! Plus you get to learn all the history of salt extraction, from simply chipping in it from the ancient times to modern methods that are quite akin to shale oil extraction – the underground passages are flooded with water and salt is pushed out of the rock. This is still a major producing salt mine, expecting super high quality salts – from gastro to biotech uses. Oh, there is also a real mummy here of a prehistoric human preserved in salt and also you get to try salt (without tequila unfortunately).