Turda Salt Mine is a very popular destination among most types of tourists coming to Romania. The place is quite extraordinary and will surprise even those savvy travelers who like to do their homework before "going places".
There is a lot of salt in Transylvania deposited millions of years ago when a shallow sea used to cover this area. The Romans started to systematically extract salt around Turda in the second century C.E. The Hungarians and later the Austrians built actual underground mining facilities, extracting large volumes of salt.
Mining activities were stopped in 1932. The mine served as a shelter for locals during World War 2 and later as a cheese storage area :-) In 1992 Salina Turda was opened for tourist visits. From 2008 to 2010, with financial help from the European Union, the mine went through a big update transforming it into the beautiful, well preserved yet modern place we can visit today.