The Historic Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Góry offers access to part of an enormous lead, silver and zinc mining landscape beneath Upper Silesia. The visitor route combines a surface museum, historic underground workings and a short boat passage. Its importance reaches beyond mineral extraction: the mine’s drainage system became an innovative source of water for towns and industry.
Tarnowskie Góry developed in one of central Europe’s major metal-producing regions. Mining expanded from the sixteenth century and faced an unusually difficult problem: vast quantities of groundwater entered workings beneath a relatively flat plateau. Over three centuries, miners and engineers created a network of shafts, galleries, pumping stations and drainage adits to control the water.
