Idrija

WIth temperatures reaching 35 on the concrete I thought I'd check from where all this extra Mercury was coming.
On satellite imagery a line from Italy to Croatia can be seen marking the fault where the Adriatic plate has been insinuating itself under the Eurasian one for millennia. Following this trail I entered the Kanomlja valley to Idrija where the oldest rocks in Slavinia - Carboniferous shales that are at least 320 million years old - can be found. Thanks to this rift, when a tax avoider named Schauffer escaped to this valley in 1480 and took up coopering, whilst testing the waterproofness of his tubs one day, discovered one tub markedly heavier than the rest bearing flashes of silvery stuff. Rather shortsightedly he took the mineral to the nearest assay office & lost control over the property as soon as the authorities discovered that it was in fact Mercury, a substance in much demand but in little supply.
By the end of the 16th C when Gewerkenegg Castle was constructed, the Idrija mine was well on its way to being the 2nd largest in the world, (after Almaden in Spain.) In fact "Gewerkenegg" means mine, for it was built for security rather than defence as it housed the mercury, the administration hq of the mine / town, and of course the manager & his family.
The Baroque painting in the courtyard was added later & recently touched up.
I was dying to see the cinnabar, by product of the smelting process, but nothing much was said about it. Briefly, I saw red.
Showing how commerce trumps even nationalism, the managers made a syndicate with the Spanish and ended up shipping most of it to Spain. Hg has a special affinity for gold you see, and by then Hispanic gold mines in South America were in full swing.
The EU banned mercury mining in 2011 so the works have closed down leaving about 40 years supply still down there, having produced 107,000 tons over 500 years (13% of the entire world production, enough to make a 20m cube,) and cut an estimated 700 km of tunnel.
Big business wants to reopen it but for once the locals and the law agree in opposing them. After all, contaminated silt is still finding its way down the Soci river into the Trieste bay.
The mine also owned 9500 hectares of forest surrounding the town, the town alone needed 30000 cubic metres per annum, and what with pit props and smelters they would have deforested the place long ago where it not for some advanced sustainable harvesting.
The bubble sculpture is supposed to invoke the feeling of mercury in the ground.Read more