Salina Turda

History

Salt has been worked at Turda since Roman times, and the mine is first documented by name in a Hungarian chancellery record from 1271; extraction continued here for nearly seven centuries before the last chamber, Terezia, closed in 1932. Rather than sealing it up, Romania reopened the mine to the public in 1992 as a halotherapy retreat, then rebuilt it in 2010 into something closer to a theme park: a 112-meter-deep shaft holding an amphitheater, mini-golf course, Ferris wheel, and a boat-lined underground lake, all lit beneath salt walls and stalactites. The main Rudolf mine's bell-shaped chamber alone rises 90 meters. What was purely industrial infrastructure a century ago is now one of Romania's most visited attractions, drawing visitors as much for the surreal underground architecture as for the salty, supposedly therapeutic air.