Slovak Mining Museum - Mining Museum in Nature — Attraction in Banská Štiavnica

Overall definitely worth a visit. Interesting mine tour and the guide tells info about Slovak mining history, how they mined in 19 and 20 centuries, about the life of miners. You can see tools and wagons along the path. What I missed was showing us the actual stones/walls inside the mine, what kind of mineral is that and how much gold or silver or other precious metal it probably contains. How to tell if it does or not. They have a mineral exhibition in open air, but the signs tells only the name of the mineral and wider location. Many of the signs are bleached from the sun, and would be useful to put the signs on the northern side of the stones. Anyway, I recommend visiting the site for the experience of exploring the wet, cold and sometimes really narrow...

Very interesting to discover secrets of mining in the past and the recent past, but very little info about present mining technology. I find the very long tour (1.5 h) in Slovak (don't know if there's a foreign language option, I recommend to check beforehand) sometimes quite dull, not very much explained, little space to ask questions in a group of ~20 people. The guide we got was very funny and friendly, willing to share his knowledge. Exhibition area is very large and full of fancy stuff (the top side quite interesting with mining buildings, tools, videos and info tables and the large underground mining tunnels), but I missed more interaction, more space to explore. The exhibition was...

One of the stop of the tour train. Take this little red train hop on hop off to watch around the old town, joyful to be bumped up and down all the way. The highlight in the town is to visit the ancient underground mine. Different from the salt mines in Poland and Austria, due to the volcanic eruption, the metal mines here are rich in gold, silver and copper, and are narrow, dark and humid. There are running water on both sides of the trail, and sleeping upside-down bats can be seen in the cave, close at hand. There are 14 levels in total, the top two levels are open for visitors, 50 meters deep, 8-9 degrees Celsius, equipped with helmet searchlights, and the whole journey takes 90-100...