Why is Rosia Montana a UNESCO site?

Rosia Montana was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List due to its remarkable historical, cultural, and natural values. The archaeological site of Rosia Montana is one of the most important gold mining sites in Europe, with a history spanning two millennia. The traces of these mining activities remain vivid testimonies, especially in the Cârnic Massif in front of you, where Roman galleries intersect with medieval and pre-industrial ones. With a bit of imagination, you can see horse-drawn carts or miners with baskets on their backs coming out of the mine entrances, carrying loads of ore. Sometimes, it seems like the dust from the explosions on these mine entrances emerges as well. A testimony to the hard work of the miners is the Băieșilor Cross on the top of the Cârnic massif, placed by them as a sign of protection. 

But let's see concretely what led to the classification of Rosia Montana as a UNESCO site. The outstanding universal value of Rosia Montana is grounded on four of the six cultural criteria established by the UNESCO World Heritage Convention. For the inscription of a site on the World Heritage List, meeting just one criterion is sufficient, however, Rosia Montana meets 3 of them - criteria ii, iii, iv, as designated by UNESCO. So let's see what these are:

Criterion II - to exhibit an important interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design;

Roșia Montană Mining Landscape contains the world’s pre-eminent example of an underground Roman gold mine and, further, demonstrates over 2,000 years of subsequent exploitation and continuous settlement. Many of the mining features preserved in over 7 km of Roman workings demonstrate exceptional innovative techniques developed by skilled miners to exploit gold in such ways that suited the technical nature of the deposit. Control of precious metal resources, to use as currency, was a fundamental factor in the development of Roman military power and Imperial expansion. A decade of professional underground archaeological campaigns, beginning in 2001, elucidates a fusion of imported Roman mining technology with locally developed techniques, unknown elsewhere from such an early era. Multiple chambers that housed treadmill-operated water-dipping wheels for drainage represent a technique likely routed from Hispania to the Balkans, whilst perfectly carved trapezoidal-section galleries, helicoidal shafts, inclined communication galleries with stairways cut into the bedrock, and vertical extraction areas (stopes) superimposed above one another with the roof carved out in steps, are in a combination so specific to Roșia Montană that they likely represent pioneering aspects in the technical history of mining.

Criterion III - to bear a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared

Roșia Montană Mining Landscape embodies the cultural tradition of one of the oldest documented mining communities in Europe, anciently founded by the Romans and which survived under influences of successive socio-technical and organizational systems whilst gradually waning until its final disappearance at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The site was the most important precious metal mine located in the Golden Quadrilateral of the Romanian Carpathians and is associated with exceptional epigraphic testimony from the Roman Imperial era.

Criterion IV - to be an outstanding example of a type of building, architectural or technological ensemble or landscape which illustrates (a) significant stage(s) in human history.

Roșia Montană Mining Landscape is testimony to the long history of gold exploitation in the Carpathian precious metals province of the Golden Quadrilateral, from the Roman era to the twenty-first century. It is an example that illustrates the strategic control and vigorous development of precious metals’ mining by the Roman Empire, essential for its longevity and military power. 

Source of the content www.rosiamontana.world 

In conclusion, if a concise presentation of the cultural values of the area were possible, the Rosia Montana mining landscape, inscribed in 2021 on the World Heritage List (UNESCO) as well as on the List of World Heritage in Danger, is composed of an extraordinary concentration of vestiges attesting to the evolution of mining operations over an exceptional period of time – 2,000 years – from the pre-Roman period to the contemporary era.

The importance of mining at Rosia Montana is not limited to Antiquity. From the end of the Crusades to the discovery of America, the Apuseni Mountains have been Europe's main source of gold. The Austrian administration brought miners from all over the Empire to the area, and thus a mining settlement was born, as picturesque as it was European.

The Alburnus Maior site, famous since the 18th century for its renowned Roman wax tablets, is represented,by an exceptional Roman underground mining system, to which are added medieval and modern galleries, a mining town preserved exemplarily since the pre-industrial period, and a landscape dotted with many traces of mining activity, among which count  hydrotechnical works or lakes (we call them "tăurile") dating from the first half of the 18th century.

You have listened to the content dedicated to the "Why is Rosia Montana a UNESCO site?" 

The UNESCO tour of Rosia Montana is a project implemented by the non-governmental organization ‘Rosia Montana in Patrimoniul Mondial’. The audio-tour is co-financed by Romania’s Administration for National Cultural Funds. We based our story telling on local anecdotes and the works listed on the bibliography on our website. We encourage you to follow the trail that we prepared for you via our website. This will ensure that you discover all objects and their stories of Rosia Montana. Have a pleasant journey and ‘drum bun’ as we say here.