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Colombia's Salt Cathedral
In 1995, a cathedral was built 180m underground in the Zipaquirá Salt Mine in Colombia.
The idea came from the miners building makeshift altars in the mine in the 1930s, to pray for their safety before starting their shifts.
It’s now a major tourist attraction, attracting more than 600,000 visitors a year.
Rachel Naylor speaks to the engineer behind it, Jorge Enrique Castelblanco.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.
We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher.
You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: Tourists in the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá. Credit: Phil Clarke Hill / In Pictures via Getty Images)
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By BBC World Service
4.5
903903 ratings
In 1995, a cathedral was built 180m underground in the Zipaquirá Salt Mine in Colombia.
The idea came from the miners building makeshift altars in the mine in the 1930s, to pray for their safety before starting their shifts.
It’s now a major tourist attraction, attracting more than 600,000 visitors a year.
Rachel Naylor speaks to the engineer behind it, Jorge Enrique Castelblanco.
Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.
For nine minutes every day, we take you back in time and all over the world, to examine wars, coups, scientific discoveries, cultural moments and much more.
Recent episodes explore everything from the death of Adolf Hitler, the first spacewalk and the making of the movie Jaws, to celebrity tortoise Lonesome George, the Kobe earthquake and the invention of superglue.
We look at the lives of some of the most famous leaders, artists, scientists and personalities in history, including: Eva Peron – Argentina’s Evita; President Ronald Reagan and his famous ‘tear down this wall’ speech; Thomas Keneally on why he wrote Schindler’s List; and Jacques Derrida, France’s ‘rock star’ philosopher.
You can learn all about fascinating and surprising stories, such as the civil rights swimming protest; the disastrous D-Day rehearsal; and the death of one of the world’s oldest languages.
(Photo: Tourists in the Salt Cathedral of Zipaquirá. Credit: Phil Clarke Hill / In Pictures via Getty Images)
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