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 did not enjoy great popularity and is a tourist attraction for a specific audience. You see – we belong to such. When we arrived to the place, we realised that we will visit the mine alone with a guide only. A private tour 🙂
There was only 6 attenders of this tour – 5 was our family and the guide man. Guide spoke in Slovak and English only. When we was exploring he was using his native language, which is so similar to Polish that we could understand almost everything. If we had trouble to find out 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 adit there is a building with ticket office and a warehouse where every visitor gets outfit and a helmet with a headlamp. The tunnel is quite dirty and can damage out clothes.
The gate is away of building about few hundred meters. The tour inside the mountain is 660 meters long and it is not lit (hence the flashlights on our heads). 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 the reconstruction of post mining of the seventeenth century. We learned that the extraction was carried out with use of pneumatic hammers only to not occur fire hazard. The most surprising information was to compare the rate of extraction of ore. When pneumatic tools started to be used extraction speed increased from few centimeters to few meters of ore a day.
The mine was closed in the 80s for economic reasons. Apparently not viable was to further explore the mountain. The inscription above the door is dated 1982.
We sincerely recommend a visit to the mine. Especially those who have not yet had occasion to visit such a place. It is child friendly and safe. For children is an amazing experience. Tickets are cheap (EUR 4 adult, 2 EUR child).
And at the end of the video of our exploring: