RAMMELSBERG

2 km from Goslar in the mountains, this UNESCO World Heritage site is an amazing testimony to the mining culture of the Harz. We will understand why "mine" in German is called Bergbau, "mountain construction". It is the only mine in the world to have been in continuous operation for 1,000 years. Cistercian monks were the first to exploit the mines, and this exploitation was developed on a large scale from the 16th to the 19th century. A hydraulic engineering system was then set up to extract the ore from the mine. We used tunnels, canals, artificial water bodies... Some instruments and infrastructures date back to the 10th and 12th centuries.

Transformed into a museum, this mine offers an exciting visit. From the 11th century to the 1980s, tin, copper, lead and silver were extracted by this highly innovative hydraulic process. Thus, thanks to the extraction of these riches, Goslar constituted one of the seats of the Holy German Empire between the 10th and 12th centuries.