Tarnowskie Góry Lead-Silver-Zinc Mine and its Underground Water Management System
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How it came to be
Tarnowskie Góry is a mining town in Upper Silesia, in southern Poland. Lead ore rich in silver was found here in the late 15th century, and in 1526 Duke Jan II the Good of Opole, together with Margrave George of Brandenburg as Duke of Krnov, made it a free mining town. The first miners came from Franconia and Bohemia. In the 17th century deeper workings flooded, and mining stopped during the Thirty Years' War.
After Prussia took Silesia in the Silesian Wars, Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden set out to revive the mines. In 1784 a rich deposit was struck 18 m down in the Rudolphine shaft, and the state-run Friedrich Mine was founded. Steam engines pumped out the water, and between 1821 and 1834 the Deep Friedrich Adit was driven; its main gallery runs 17 km. Water drawn from it later supplied the Upper Silesian industrial region.
Over four centuries miners sank more than 20,000 shafts and cut more than 150 km of passages. Part of the drainage system, the Black Trout Adit, opened to visitors by boat in 1957, and a route through the mine itself opened on 5 September 1976. ICOMOS recommended deferral in 2017, but the World Heritage Committee, meeting in Kraków, inscribed the site on 9 July 2017.
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