Underground church

Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral

The photos in the Colombian Lunch post from a couple of days ago were taken in Zipaquirá, a town not too far from Bogotá. Before eating lunch, we visited a cathedral made out of a salt mine. An indigenous group called the Muiscas first began mining salt in the area during pre-Colombian times. The wealth they generated from the mines helped them become one of the most powerful indigenous groups in the region. In the early 1930's the mine was still in use, and miners carved religious symbols into the salty rock to worship deep underground. Later, in the 1950's miners and architects worked together to created an elaborate tunnel-shaped cathedral, complete with the stations of the cross and depictions of Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection. In recent years, the underground salt cathedral has been renovated for safety and is now a very popular tourist destination in Colombia.

 

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