Las Médulas

Las Médulas, (León - Castilla y León) Spain

This unique area of Spain used to be the most important gold mine of the Roman Empire more than 2000 years ago.  The landscape you can see in this picture is the result of mining some five million Roman pounds of gold over a period of 250 years.  The Romans used a system of hydraulic mining by boring a series of narrow cavities into the mountains and subsequently using the pressure of large quantities of water, supplied from area streams and rivers brought in through a series of aqueducts, to break up the rock and extract the gold.

This area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997.

(Click on the picture to see it bigger.)