Major Tourist Attraction
The silver mines are situated in Saggrenda, approximately 8 kilometres west of Kongsberg. Visitors to the King's Mine, the biggest mine in the Kongsberg area, board the mining train which takes them through the 2,300 metres of the Christian VII Adit. The bottom of the mine is 1,070 metres below the surface, which corresponds to 560 metres below sea level. Since its closure in 1958, the silver mines has been a preserved area. It's now open for guided tours for tourists, of whom some 40,000 every year enter the Kings Mine, which is the oldest, deepest, and richest mine in Kongsberg. On the tour, you can see the first man engine in Kongsberg in action. You can also see an impressive three-dimensional map of all the mines, a stope blown out with dynamite and the adits excavated by fire-setting.
For a more physically demanding trip, tours are arranged from the Kings Mine through the Lower Mountain down to Kongsberg city, a trip of roughly five hours.
Read more about this topic: Kongsberg Silver Mines
Famous quotes containing the words major, tourist and/or attraction:
“Self-centeredness is a natural outgrowth of one of the toddler’s major concerns: What is me and what is mine...? This is why most toddlers are incapable of sharing ... to a toddler, what’s his is what he can get his hands on.... When something is taken away from him, he feels as though a piece of him—an integral piece—is being torn from him.”
—Lawrence Balter (20th century)
“The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence.”
—Max Lerner (b. 1902)
“The satirist is prevented by repulsion from gaining a better knowledge of the world he is attracted to, yet he is forced by attraction to concern himself with the world that repels him.”
—Italo Calvino (1923–1985)