Roman Hispania

Las Médulas

Today: Carucedo, Spain

Years
19 BCE–200

The largest open-cast gold mine of the empire, worked by ruina montium: water was driven into the rock through galleries until the hill collapsed. The Romans began working it after the conquest of the Astures, which Augustus led between 26 and 19 BCE, and left it exhausted between the end of the 2nd century and the start of the 3rd. What remains is a landscape of red sand among chestnut trees and more than four hundred kilometres of channels.

What to see today

Get directions

Google Maps Waze

Open in the map Read more on Wikipedia

by Phantazein

We count visits ourselves: no cookies, no third-party analytics, nothing stored on your device. To count people rather than clicks, we keep a one-way code derived from your connection and browser for at most 48 hours and then delete it; what remains is totals per page that identify no one. We never store your IP.