• El Parador de Cardona.

  • The entrance to La Muntanya de Sal.

  • The "Cistine Chapel" chamber in La Muntanya de Sal.

  • Salt stalactites hanging from the mine tunnel ceiling.

La Muntanya de Sal

El Parador de Cardona.
El Parador de Cardona.

Sometimes work takes me to some pretty interesting places. This weekend I’m at a conference in Parador del Cardona, a castle in the town of Cardona in Catalonia. The hotel is actually a castle (my room is behind the rightmost tree in the picture) and is a very interesting place, with a lovely chapel that I’ve only had a glance in so far, and conference facilities that feel like they’re in the old castle dungeon. However, the real interest is why the castle is here at all – Cardon is famous for salt, which is how the local Dukes made their money. The salt comes from Muntanya de Sal, the mountain of salt, much of which has been mined away, but the remains of which are on the edge of town and are now a museum which includes a guided tour of some of the mine tunnels. It sounded too interesting to miss, so I escaped from the conference for a couple of hours.

The entrance to La Muntanya de Sal.
The entrance to La Muntanya de Sal.

The tour starts with a ride to the entrance down the side of a huge pile of tailings. The entrance itself is a tunnel into the hill on a flat, white plain of salt. The salt rocks themselves are various shades of red due to iron impurities, but when water seeps through them it dissolves the salt and then redeposits it, just like in a limestone cave, into stalactites and other formations made from crystals of pure white salt. The combination of the red and white is spectacular, and the different forms of the white salt are fascinating, from smooth flows, to incredibly thin columns.

Salt stalactites hanging from the mine tunnel ceiling.
Salt stalactites hanging from the mine tunnel ceiling.

The underground tour takes about an hour, and was all in Spanish on my visit, so I didn’t understand much, but the sheer beauty of the mine makes it very much worthwhile, even though you only see a fraction of the total area. For most of it you aren’t allowed to take photographs, but happily there’s one chamber where you can – all the pictures here are from that one chamber, which has fantastic white formations, but doesn’t quite do the red of the undissolved salt justice.

The "Sistine Chapel" chamber in La Muntanya de Sal.
The "Sistine Chapel" chamber in La Muntanya de Sal.

If you’re ever in Northern Spain, I thoroughly recommend a visit to Muntanya de Sal in Cardona. It perhaps wasn’t much of an adventure, but is certainly a unique experience – it’s not every day the guide insists that you taste the walls as they show you around!

5 thoughts on “La Muntanya de Sal”

  1. Hmmm, licking the walls 😯 😯

    Looks very interesting tho…. and a super posh hotel, or were the bedrooms a little dungeon like as well? (We don’t need to hear about shackles and chains in the bedrooms 😯 😯 😯 😯 )

    1. The room featured bars on the window and walls that were about 1.5m thick, but apart from that, it was a very nice hotel room. I don’t think all the rooms featured bars (apart from mini-bars), so perhaps I’m a known trouble-maker…

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