Mines of Rammelsberg, Historic Town of Goslar and Upper Harz Water Management System

For some eight centuries, miners drew silver, lead and copper from the Rammelsberg and fed the wealth of nearby Goslar. To power the work they built an extraordinary network of ponds, ditches, tunnels and drains across the Upper Harz — begun by Cistercian monks in the Middle Ages and vastly expanded from the late 16th to the 19th century — one of the great achievements of pre-industrial mining. UNESCO inscribed the Rammelsberg mines, Goslar and the Upper Harz water system as a World Heritage Site in 1992.