Where mining first became a science
A silver town in central Slovakia sitting inside the caldera of a collapsed volcano, which is why the ore is there. Celts mined it in the 3rd century BC, the Cotini worked it under Roman eyes, and by the middle ages it was one of the great mining centres of Europe. What it is really known for is what it invented: the world’s first mining academy was founded here in 1762, gunpowder was first used for blasting in a mine here in 1627, and the tajchy, a system of artificial reservoirs and channels built to drive the pumps, is still on the hillsides. The town is small now, under 10,000 people, and its centre is a UNESCO World Heritage Site listed in 1993.
Slovakia
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Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
