For many centuries miners went deep down to mine for copper, plomb, zinc and silver in the South Tyrolean mines. Today, on your summer holiday in South Tyrol and equipped with helmet and headlamp you can discover this "underworld" at first hand and get an idea of the miners' work.

Klimastollen Prettau gallery

The special microclimate at around 1,200 meters inside the mountain has a very beneficiary effect on people with respiratory problems. What is important is that the temperature of around 9 degrees Celsius is constant and that the relative humidity of the air is very high (95%). If you come to South Tyrol to breath in good air and to treat your airways you should spend at least two hours in the gallery on a regular basis.

Mining museum Ridanna

At a hight of 2,500 m above sea level, the Ridanna mine connects the two valleys of Ridanna and Passiria. For around 800 years, silver, plomb and zinc was mined in the massif of the Monteneve mountain – an era of blossoming economy which went down in history as "the Silver Age of Tyrol". In Tyrol's highest situated mine, up to a thousand miners were digging across 70 galleries under the most severe working and living conditions.

Fundres Mine

One step into the darkness sheds light on a hundred years of Villandro's mining history. the Villandro museum association gives you the unique opportunity of re-enacting a part of its past in the restored Elisabeth gallery of the Fundres Mine. In this mine, overall 16 galleries were driven into the massif. The miners digged for galenite, copper, pyrite, sphalerite and silver.