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Mines/Austria

Schwaz silver mines (Falkenstein)

Schwaz silver mines (Falkenstein), Austria. Heritage site, underground, mining silver, copper.

Why Schwaz silver mines (Falkenstein) is famous

Mining began about 1410 and the Falkenstein pits opened in 1420. About 12,000 miners worked there around 1500 and 7,400 in 1554. Ore was extracted until 1957, and it has been a show mine since 1990. The Tirol PDF claims 85 percent of world silver, and habsburger.net gives about 50,000 in silver mining by 1520, so figures conflict.1,2,3,4

Story cards

Schwaz silver mines (Falkenstein) today

Where silver is mined todayWhere copper is mined todayMining in Austria

Where next

People

Owned byJakob Fugger the RichHis firm came to dominate Tyrolean silver and copper mining at Schwaz.5

Mines

An example ofKutna Hora silver minesAbout 12,000 miners worked Schwaz around 1500. Kutna Hora's mines were among the world's largest.1

Sources

  1. Schwaz silver mining Austria-Forum
  2. Schwaz mining history PDF Land Tirol
  3. Schwaz silver habsburger.net
  4. Wikidata entity Q583485
  5. Fugger, Jakob der Reiche Neue Deutsche Biographie / Deutsche Biographie

Pictures on this page: Albrecht Dürer 080.jpg, Albrecht Dürer (Public domain).

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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Pictures: Timna in de Negevwoestijn; rotspartij "de zuilen van Salomo", Poll, Willem van de / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Potosi, Bolivia, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Kimberley, South Africa: miners and washing gear at the Bultfontein diamond mine. Woodburytype, 1888, after a photograph by Robert Harris., Harris, Robert, active 1881-1888. (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0).