On the list of the most interesting places in Slovakia we found a gold mine in Kremnica. We wanted to visit this place. This mine doesn’t enjoy great popularity and is a tourist attraction for a specific audience — and we belong to that group. When we arrived to the place, we realised that we would visit the mine alone with just a guide. A private tour 🙂
There were only 6 people on this tour – 5 were our family and the guide. The guide spoke only Slovak and English. When we were exploring he was using his native language, which is so similar to Polish that we could understand almost everything. If we had trouble figuring out the proper word meaning we used English to clarify. So in addition to visiting a great place we had also a large dose of the Slovak language.
Mine was called Andrej Adit. This historic adit is located in the hill of Kremica town. In front of the adit there is a building with a ticket office and a warehouse where every visitor gets an outfit and a helmet with a headlamp. The tunnel is quite dirty and can damage our clothes.
The gate is about a few hundred meters from the building. The tour inside the mountain is 660 meters long and it is not lit (hence the headlamps). Formerly in the area of Kremnica everyone was mining gold. Whole families were involved in mining. While walking down the adit we can read the story of the past. On the route we can find a set of exposures at which we stop for a while with guide. We saw transport wagons as well as a reconstruction of seventeenth-century mining. We learned that the extraction was carried out using only pneumatic hammers to avoid fire hazards. The most surprising information was to compare the rate of extraction of ore. When pneumatic tools started to be used extraction speed increased from a few centimeters to a few meters of ore a day.
The mine was closed in the 80s for economic reasons. Apparently it was no longer viable to further explore the mountain. The inscription above the door was dated 1982.
We sincerely recommend a visit to the mine. Especially for those who have not yet had the chance to visit such a place. It is child friendly and safe. For children it is an amazing experience. Tickets are cheap (EUR 4 adult, 2 EUR child).
And at the end, a video of our exploration: