Museum Amusement (Cluj)

Turda, Romania. Not far from Cluj Napoca is the salt mine museum, Salina Turda. At a mining museum, I expected rusty equipment and piles of rocks and stairways stringed with bare lightbulbs....

So it didn't surprise me to see topiary typography at the entry.

But I couldn't anticipate a more surprising and surreal museum space. Imagine a huge deep chasm with glistening, rippling porpoise skin rock walls, modernist lights, and futuristic wooden pavilions.

It's hard to learn about how the salt mines worked. Some interpretation is there, but it's a bit hard to find. Meanwhile you can do other things, like play ping pong, ferris wheel, put put golf....This is a museum space turned amusement park.

You can even go boating, one level deeper, on the underground lake.

The few interpretation galleries are closer to the surface, and empty, for the most part.

Some visitors investigating the salt

Welcome graphics near the entry call it "A Gate to Transylvania's Heart".

Revolving translucent images on the door.