A thousand unbroken years of silver, and the emperors it paid for
A mountain on the northern edge of the Harz above Goslar that was mined continuously for more than a thousand years, silver, copper and lead, until it finally closed in 1988: no other mine in the world had worked without a break for so long. The silver out of this hill funded the Ottonian emperors and made Goslar an imperial seat. The legend is that a knight called Ramm, hunting with Otto the Great in 968, tied his horse to a tree and the impatient animal pawed the ground until it exposed the ore, and the mountain took his name. UNESCO listed the mine, the old town of Goslar and the Upper Harz water management system in 1992, and the workings are open as a visitor mine.
Lower Saxony, Germany
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Other places on the map within a couple of hours of here.
