The underground cathedral — 200 metres below the Bogotá savanna, Colombia's Salt Cathedral is one of the most extraordinary interior spaces in the Americas
Zipaquirá is a colonial town of 130,000 on the savanna north of Bogotá, famous throughout Latin America for its Catedral de Sal — an underground Roman Catholic cathedral carved directly into an active salt mine 200 metres below the surface. The cathedral (opened 1995, built in a 15th-century salt mining complex) is one of Colombia's most visited landmarks: its vast nave cut from halite rock, its fourteen Stations of the Cross illuminated by blue and violet light, and its 23-metre cross at the main altar make it arguably the most dramatic church interior in the Americas. Zipaquirá also has a b…
The Muisca people of the Bogotá savanna mined salt at Zipaquirá for centuries before the Spanish conquest, trading it across the Andean highlands in a pre-Columbian economy that salt essentially powered. The Spanish continued extraction and the town developed as a salt supply centre for New Granada. The original miners' chapel carved into the salt mine (1932) was replaced by the current cathedral (1991–1995) after the original was deemed structurally unsafe. The salt mine remains active — the cathedral occupies the worked-out upper galleries while modern extraction continues below, making it…