Salt Festival

The event is an opportunity to go on a journey into the past, back to the golden age of the grand royal salt mining company, and to learn more about how the precious mineral was mined in Wieliczka.
The family event will be held in the courtyard of the Wieliczka Saltworks Castle. The Salt Festival will be organised for the 18th time. Its previous edition, which took place back in 2019, brought together more than 15 000 visitors. Before the pandemic and the renovation of the Saltworks Castle, the Festival was held annually. Now it is coming back after a 5-year hiatus. This year’s edition is titled Salt Festival - for Salt and Education.
The Traditions’ Sector will feature a re-enactment of a 17th-century salt evaporation plant with wooden tools, where visitors will have an opportunity to try their hand at making salt themselves. The interactive elements of the Festival will also enable them to see how good they are at various jobs inextricably linked to the former Saltworks, such as weaving ropes, building barrels, making pots and paper, weaving baskets, forging metal parts and pouring candles.
The Education Sector will feature salt dough sculpting workshops, salt shaker painting stations, creating and stamping documents, as well as interesting and unorthodox chemistry experiments in a mobile laboratory. Visitors can also take the challenge of the Strongest Salt Athlete obstacle course and rappel down the tower on a rope.
During the Festival, the Saltworks Castle will be open and guides will take visitors on tours around the former headquarters of the mining operation - this is a unique opportunity to explore the previously inaccessible interiors of the northern castle with polychrome decorations, as well as see the temporary exhibitions: Miners’ World and The Secrets of the Church of St Clement in Wieliczka. The unique collection of salt shakers, widely considered to be one of the most precious in the world, awaits visitors in the Middle Castle, which also hosts the Rope Making in Pictures exhibition.
The Festival will also feature concerts of the “Wieliczka” Salt Mine Representative Brass Band, Kapela Mietniowska and Kapela Hanki Wójciak,  as well as an interactive theatre play by actors of the Krak-Art and a Salt Basket raffle.