All Mine
Sleeping in a 500-Year-Old Silver Mine

This week, you watched 33 miners emerge to a hero’s welcome in Chile. And naturally, you found yourself thinking about just one thing: getting your own hero’s welcome.

Of course, you’d change a few things—a shorter stay in the mine, for one. No actual mining, obviously. And you wouldn’t mind exchanging Chile for Sweden...

Welcome to Sala Silvermine, a 500-year-old hand-carved mine in Sweden converted into a solitary suite, taking reservations now.

You’ll check in at the mouth of the mine, where the concierge will lead you outside to a sturdy elevator (emphasis on sturdy) to the bottom floor, a tenth of a mile underground. From there, you’ll walk past a gaping medieval dining hall, through an echoing cavern stained with smoke from centuries-old torches and, finally, to a cozy nook in the far wall, lit only by a few candelabras and an oil lamp.

Fortify yourself with the champagne and, yes, cave-aged gruyère waiting in your room. Then, take a guided half-mile stroll through the caverns, return to the surface to zip-line across the mouth of the cave or try the riskiest challenge here: diving into the bottom half of the mine, which happens to be sunk under ice-cold water. Only a handful of people have explored it—it’s so dangerous, you’ll need a cave-diving certification (like scuba for caves) before they’ll let you anywhere near it.

What’s the worst that could happen.