Las Medulas

In effect the Romans demolished a complete range of mountains to get the gold, just leaving jagged peaks. With typical roman engineering skills they channeled water from further up the mountains, making 8 different channels over many kilometres. They dug reservoirs at the ends of the channels and dug deep shafts and galleries into the mountain and then filled them with water. When the water pressure was enough, the whole side of the mountain collapsed, and they could pan out the gold. See the diagram that explained it . The jagged peaks that remain are all that's left. And after all that effort they only managed to extract about 600 tonnes of gold.

We took a mountain hike around the base of the mine site, just a 5 km mountain hike in the heat of the day, and felt very virtuous when after a couple of hours we managed it! Then drove up to the top of the nearby mountain to look down on the view of the remains of the mountain range.Read more