Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral

This guide to the Zipaquirá Salt Cathedral near Bogotá opens with a strange fact: a finished cathedral, carved into a working salt mine, was sealed shut in 1990. It traces the story back to 1932, when miners carved a shrine to the Virgin of the Rosary of Guasa into the salt wall and touched it before each shift on their way into the tunnels. By 1954 that shrine had grown into a full cathedral of three carved naves under a monumental cross, built into the mine's second level. Listen for the mention of the mine's original niche as you pass through the entrance.