Almadén’s mine shaped global economies for centuries. Its cinnabar deposits supplied mercury on a scale unmatched by almost any other source, linking a small town in Castilla-La Mancha with silver production across the Atlantic. The mining park now allows visitors to descend into historic workings and examine furnaces, machinery, labour and the serious human consequences of extracting a toxic metal.
UNESCO inscribed the Heritage of Mercury: Almadén and Idrija in 2012 under criteria (ii) and (iv). Almadén had produced mercury since antiquity; Idrija in present-day Slovenia began after mercury was found there in 1490. Together they preserve the most complete evidence of the world’s two largest mercury-mining centres.
