Freiberg Mining Landscape - Ascension Pit

The Freiberg mining landscape is the oldest and most important silver mining area in the Ore Mountains. The targeted transformation process of an originally agriculturally used landscape into a mining cultural landscape in the immediate vicinity of the ore veins changed the landscape. New settlements, mines, processing plants and smelters, heaps and pits, as well as water management systems, were created. Numerous well-preserved mining facilities such as the Abraham Shaft or Old Elisabeth and the heap formations of this mining landscape testify to this development.

Originally, the ores of the Freiberg mining area were smelted at many different locations in the region. As part of state reforms, only two smelter complexes ultimately remained, with the older one located in Muldenhütten. At the formerly largest and most important smelter complex in the Ore Mountains, non-ferrous metals have been processed for at least 600 years up to the present day. Numerous new technologies were developed from here. From 1887 to 1953 Muldenhütten was the site of the Saxon State Mint or one of the mint sites of the former GDR. Today the industrial complex is considered one of the oldest smelting sites of non-ferrous metallurgy in Germany that is still in operation.