Today, when modern mining technology puts salt on our tables virtually free of charge, it’s hard for us to imagine how difficult to obtain, and how valuable, this material used to be.

The Salt of the Earth focuses on the historic salt mine at Wieliczka near Cracow, once part of the Royal Cracovian Saltworks – owned and protected by Casimir the Great.

In the days when a block of salt was literally “hard currency”, one third of Poland’s revenue is said to have come from the “grey gold”.