MICHAL MINE (DŮL MICHAL)

More than a visit, the Michal mine offers a fascinating exploration of the region's industrial destiny. Coal mining in Ostrava began in 1850 and the Michal mine soon became one of the most modern in Europe, and the first to be electrified in the early 1910s. Nationalized in 1945, it participated in the industrial development of the region and the USSR, employing 2,500 miners. In 1960, the network of mines under the Michal mine was connected to other mines but profitability was declining. On May 30, 1993, the last coal car left the mine and most of the shafts were filled in. The site nevertheless reopened in 2000, after many years of transformation, to offer visitors an extraordinary experience. Following the daily life of a miner on his way to work, the visit begins with the administrative offices, the suspended changing rooms, the shower rooms... Furniture and equipment of the period have been arranged to evoke their world as well as that of the geologists. The surface visit ends with the control room, evocative of a Star Trek episode from the late 1960s! In the outer buildings, we discover the enormous machine rooms, those that were used to send electricity into the mine shafts, to ventilate them, to make the first drillings... Their state of conservation is excellent and will allow enthusiasts to plunge into a little-known page of technology east of the Iron Curtain.