Tarnowskie Góry — a lead, silver and zinc mine and the water beneath it

A town that grew out of galena

Tarnowskie Góry exists because of ore. What was dug here was galena, lead sulphide, worked both for lead and for the silver locked up in it. In 1526 the settlement was granted mining freedom and its own mining law by Duke Jan II the Good of Opole together with Margrave George of Brandenburg-Ansbach. The first generation of miners came from Franconia and from the Bohemian field around Kutná Hora, so the earliest working languages here were German and Czech; the town polonised later. The „Góry“ in the name means mountains, but refers to shafts and spoil heaps rather than to any hills.

Prosperity lasted until the end of the sixteenth century. Then the workings went deeper and water became the problem that would shape everything afterwards. Horse-driven whims could not lift it fast enough, the Thirty Years' War wrecked what drainage machinery there was, and for nearly two centuries mining here all but stopped.

The revival was organised under Prussian administration by Friedrich Wilhelm von Reden and Friedrich Anton von Heynitz, who had toured England's industrial districts together in 1776. Sinking began in October 1783, and on 16 July 1784 a rich deposit was struck eighteen metres down in the Rudolphine shaft; two days later the same happened in the Anton shaft. The new royal mine was named Frederick, the Friedrichsgrube, and it worked for close to a hundred and thirty years.

The drainage is the monument

What earned this place its listing is not the ore but the engineering that kept the workings dry. The first breakthrough was a steam engine that started on 19 January 1788, the first in the Kingdom of Prussia and among the first on the European mainland. Brought over from Britain, it drove the pumps in the ore workings and opened up the lower levels.

The second was an adit. A design by the mine captains Thürnagel and Eisleben was approved in December 1820, and driving of the Deep Frederick Adit began on 21 April 1821 at Ptakowice. Its 4,568-metre main gallery was cut from fourteen faces at once, reached through narrow shafts called light-holes, with twenty-five more sunk along the line for ventilation. At three to four metres a week the work took thirteen years, and the adit opened on 15 July 1834.

The mouth was framed in a classical sandstone portal now known as the Miners' Gate. The open channel carries the water just under nine hundred metres to the river Drama. All told, four centuries of mining left over twenty thousand shafts and more than a hundred and fifty kilometres of underground galleries.

The two routes open to visitors

The Historic Silver Mine opens up part of the old Friedrichsgrube. The route, in use since 5 September 1976, runs forty metres underground, measures 1,740 metres and closes a triangle between three shafts: Anioł (Angel), Żmija (Viper) and Szczęść Boże (God Bless). About two hundred and seventy metres are covered by boat. Three chambers of between five hundred and two thousand square metres open off the route, along with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century workfaces. Underground it is a steady ten degrees whatever the season. On the surface there is an open-air collection of steam machinery — a road roller, portable engines, locomotives, pumps — with a five-hundred-metre narrow-gauge line running round it.

The Black Trout Adit is a six-hundred-metre stretch of the Deep Frederick Adit, open since 1957 and for decades the longest underground boat trip in Poland. You go down a winding staircase to a landing stage in either the Ewa or the Sylwester shaft — the boats shuttle between them — and are then poled along while the guide talks. The gallery is between 1.2 and 2.5 metres wide and up to four metres high, with a little over half a metre of water. Small stalactites are forming on the roof.

Getting there

• By car — Tarnowskie Góry sits where the A1 and A4 motorways meet, some fifteen kilometres north of Katowice; the mine and the adit each have parking but lie about five kilometres apart.
• By train — this is a major junction, with direct services from Katowice, Gliwice and Opole; a city bus runs from the station to the Silver Mine.
• By air — Katowice-Pyrzowice airport is roughly thirty kilometres away.
• As a day trip — both underground routes fit comfortably into one day; start with the mine, which takes longer.

Worth knowing

The inscription was announced on 9 July 2017 at the 41st session of the World Heritage Committee, held in Kraków. It covers twenty-eight separate elements spread across Tarnowskie Góry, Bytom and the municipality of Zbrosławice: workings, galleries, shafts, adits, an ore-washing heap and an early twentieth-century park. The site takes in around 1,673 hectares with a buffer zone of some 2,774 hectares. The Silver Mine is also an anchor point on the European Route of Industrial Heritage.

For both routes, dress warmly and wear shoes you do not mind getting wet — it drips down there. The mine route is wheelchair accessible; the adit is reached by a spiral staircase. Visits are guided only, and tours in languages other than Polish need to be booked ahead. Parts of the workings are a bat hibernation site and are closed off outside the visitor routes.

How to get there and practical info

Location

Tarnowskie Góry, Bytom and Zbrosławice municipality, Silesian Voivodeship

UNESCO World Heritage since

9 July 2017, as one site of 28 elements

Area

about 1,673 hectares, with a buffer zone of some 2,774 hectares

Silver Mine route

1,740 metres at a depth of 40 metres, about 270 of them by boat

Black Trout Adit

600 metres by boat between the Ewa and Sylwester shafts

Temperature underground

a constant 10 °C or so

Time needed

about an hour and a half for the mine, about forty minutes for the adit

Note

guided visits only; non-Polish tours must be booked in advance

Current hours and tickets

Historic Silver Mine, Black Trout Adit

When to go