Tour Overview
During this exciting tour to the Historic Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Gory, you will explore the underground trail of chambers and winding corridors carefully selected from among 20,000 of them. A chill guide will let you board a boat sliding along a water-covered mining pavement, providing you with instructive facts on the mines' drainage system and exploration methods of precious metals. This journey into the world of darkness and tricks of mining will have its end on the surface of the earth, in the Steam Engines Heritage Park. As perfect for adults, as for the child visitors, with the needs of the disabled taken into account by the Mine's operators.
Tarnowskie Gory is a historic town located in
the Silesian Highlands, less than 50 kilometres northwards from
Katowice. Its establishment and blooming were entailed by the discovery of a lump of silver in the area around 1490. According to a popular legend, it was made by a common peasant named Rybka. Throughout centuries, the structure of the mine would undergo successive improvement, along with a number of
pioneering implementations introduced underground. They were applied to serve the purpose of "going deeper" with silver exploration, once the opencast method had proven no longer efficient. The outcome of it, now open to the public as
the Historic Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Gory, is
an impressive example of industrial heritage of Upper Silesia, if not Europe as a whole. Standard sightseeing encompasses 90 minutes of an underground tour, with additional 30 minutes devoted to
the Steam Engines Heritage Park. You will begin your tour at the ground level, with
a cutting-edge exhibition provided at the overground part of the Angel shaft. It extensively and amusingly covers the field of geology and old mining equipment (e.g. various types of drilling tools used in digging adits, buckets or mining lamps), putting
a unique animated steam engine on display. You will learn that the mines and side facilities of Tarnowskie Gory would be
the world's leading providers of lead and zinc, playing a crucial part in the global market of silver industry until 1913, when the exploration of the workings was terminated.
It's high time
you put your helmet on and enter a hoisting cage to descend 40 metres down the Angel Shaft, where
the 15th- and 19th-century workings have been carefully reconstructed. Its set of corridors will require bending your back really low at times, as you go through the reinforced tunnels of the tourist trail. Staszic Gallery is the first sector of the route, leading you straight to the beautiful
Silver Chamber (one of the three present there, also including
the Obstruct and
Low chambers). During your tour, you will traverse
the Viper and
Godspeed Shafts, being exposed to the recordings of miners' effort, the view of their
tools from various epochs,
huge dolomite rocks and well-preserved floors made by the workers themselves. Nearly
300 metres of the route will require
boarding a boat from you to continue the trip. The assistance of expert guides will make your stay underground worthwhile in terms of stories absorbed there.
The sightseeing of the Historic Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Gory is usually accompanied by a short side tour along
the Steam Engines Heritage Park. This outdoor site will let you see
a large and well-maintained collection of 19th and 20th-century mining machinery, such as older models of road rollers, railway cranes, steam locomotives and winding engines. A brand-new attraction of the park should be something for whole families to enjoy: it lets you
take a ride along the Park's Little Railway, encircling the impressive exhibition
at the length of 500 metres.
Interested in exploring the depths of one of Europe's most significant silver mines? Let us take you to the Historic Silver Mine in Tarnowskie Gory, with the tour plan customised especially for you!
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