Gold mine exploring with kids

On the list of the most interesting places in Slovakia we found a gold mine in Kremnica, so we planned our route to stop there on the way. 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 at 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: the five of us and the guide. The guide spoke Slovak and English. During the tour he used his native language, which is so similar to Polish that we could understand almost everything. When a word sounded familiar but meant something else in Polish, we used English to clarify. So in addition to visiting a great place, we also got a large dose of the Slovak language.

The mine is called Štôlňa Andrej (Andrej Adit). This historic adit is located on the edge of Kremnica. 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 adit is quite dirty, and you would not want to get your own clothes dirty.

The gate is 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 through the adit, we learned how gold used to be mined. Along the route there are exhibits where the guide stops for a while. We saw transport wagons, mining workplaces from the 1930s and 1980s, and a reconstruction of a 17th-century workplace. We learned that pneumatic hammers were used to avoid the risk of fire. The most surprising thing was the comparison of extraction rates. In the past, miners cut a few centimeters of rock a day by hand. Once pneumatic tools were introduced, this increased to a few meters a day.

The Andrej Adit was dug in 1982 as an exploration adit. The work was stopped in the 1980s for economic reasons. Apparently it was no longer viable to explore the mountain further. The inscription above the door is dated 1982.

Fun fact: deep mining of gold and silver in Kremnica ended in 1970, when the ore contained only 1-3 grams of gold per tonne. But the town still has a golden tradition: its mint dates back to the 14th century and is considered the oldest still-working mint in the world. Kremnica ducats were famous across Europe for their high gold content.

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 for adults, EUR 2 for children).

Finally, here is a video of our exploration: