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Mines/Czechia

Kutna Hora silver mines

Kutna Hora silver mines, Czechia. Heritage site, underground, mining silver.

Why Kutna Hora silver mines is famous

ICOMOS says the town was founded in the early 1260s because of silver mining, and its mines ranked among the largest in the world in the Middle Ages. Wenceslas II set up the mint at the Vlassky dvur in 1300. Mines were exhausted in the early 1540s. The start year is the foundation of the town, not a dated mine opening.1,2

Story cards

Kutna Hora silver mines today

Where silver is mined todayMining in Czechia

Where next

Mines

ExamplesSchwaz silver mines (Falkenstein)About 12,000 miners worked Schwaz around 1500. Kutna Hora's mines were among the world's largest.3ExamplesBanska Stiavnica mining districtCentral European silver towns: Banska Stiavnica from 1156, Kutna Hora from the early 1260s.4

Places

Located inKutna HoraKutna Hora silver mines sits at Kutna Hora.1

Sources

  1. Kutna Hora: historical town centre, evaluation No 732 UNESCO World Heritage Centre / ICOMOS advisory body evaluation
  2. Wikidata item Q155975 (Kutna Hora) Wikidata (CC0)
  3. Schwaz silver mining Austria-Forum
  4. Wikidata item Q208110 (Banska Stiavnica) Wikidata (CC0)

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Cerro Rico over Potosí by Jbmurray, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Potosi, Bolivia, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Dolcoath tin mine, Camborne, Cornwall: miners in a mine shaft, standing on wooden platforms connected by ladders. Photograph by J. C. Burrow, 1890/1910., Burrow, J. C., 1852-1914 (Public Domain Mark 1.0); The laboratories of Marie and Pierre Curie, Paris: room where experiments on uranium ore took place. Photograph, ca. 1900., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0).