Modern Pipes at the Salzwelten Hallstatt
It is probably not surprising that the the Salzwelten Hallstatt has quite a lot of stories to tell. It is after all, considered to be the oldest salt mine in the world. There are tens of kilometers of tunnels here spread over twenty levels. It is hard to imagine that the mountain was actually hiding something that significant. Seven thousand years of mining built this huge salt mine. For the most part of its history, the salt was manually mined and carved into U-shaped rocks and finally carried out of the mine. The salt will then be extracted from the rock. Such is the system here that everyone in the village had their own role to play in the salt mine.
Shaft at the Salzwelten Hallstatt
Of course, mining didn’t stay like that. As technology progressed, new inventions, discoveries and techniques were eventually applied to mining here. While salt mining might not be as important to Hallstatt as it used to be. There is still some mining going on here. You can see evidence of modern methods in the salt mine. More modern techniques of salt mining involve flooding the chamber with water and allowing the salt to dissolve in the water. The water is then suctioned out and then shipped to a processing center where the salt is extracted. The processing center is outside the mine. But you can see how technology has modernized this millennia old industry.
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