Wieliczka is a town in southern Poland in the Krakow metro area, with 17,900 inhabitants (1998), situated in the Lesser Poland Voivodship (since 1999), previously in Krakow Voivodship (1975-1998).
The town is famous for having the oldest operational salt mine in the world, having been worked for over 700 years. The mine is also notable for a long-running tradition of tourism; Copernicus, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Alexander von Humboldt, Ignacy Paderewski, Dmitri Mendeleev, Robert Baden-Powell, Karol Wojtyla (later Pope John Paul II), ordinary people and crowned heads of state, all have visited this remarkable site.
In 1978, the salt mine was entered into the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.
