Excursion to the most historically important
Czech gold mine

The Jílovské gold mines are historically the most important source of gold in the Czech lands. Thanks to the proceeds of the local mines, magnificent buildings, churches and entire districts were built in medieval Prague. In 2013, Montanika took over the rights and obligations to a set of mining operations in the main part of the Jihlava ore district. The reconstruction of the initial 200 metres of the Václav adit took a year and a half. This was followed by securing 1,300 metres of the dewatering adit and removing many years of deposits, then replacing 500 metres of wooden footbridges in the water adit, and finally reconstructing 500 metres of the track to the Pepř shaft. Further work focused mainly on the area of the pit's headwaters and, in particular, on opening up the passages and workings in the Šlojíř vein - the legendary source of gold in Jílovské. After several years of mainly reconstruction works, we started to improve the technical equipment of the mine, installed a compressor for demonstrations of the operation of machines powered by compressed air, perfectly illuminated the mined out areas in the accessible parts, even under the water surface. There is still a lot of work to be done, but we are encouraged by the positive reactions and interest of the general and professional public and the representatives of the town of Jílové u Prahy (Jilove near Prague). Our goal is to make the entire mine complex in this area accessible with several route options where visitors will be able to see different gold mining techniques from deep history to the 20th century.

REVIEW