Coal mines

In northern Saarland, near the French border, these buildings transport you back to the Prussian mining era.

In a border village near the German–French frontier lies a slumbering industrial giant where, since the second half of the nineteenth century, coal was extracted on a massive scale.

During the heyday of coal mining, cable winches were standard equipment in every coal mine. Such a winch was used, for example, to install the steel elevator cables.

A 58-meter-high headframe tower dominates an otherwise anonymous industrial site in the French Moselle. As early as 1931, two deep shafts were dug here to mine coal.

Deep beneath the Lorraine soil in northeastern France lie coal seams that were extensively extracted after the end of the First World War.

Thanks to its red colour, the Delbrück II headframe is a true landmark in the Saarland mining landscape.

The headframe of Puits Vuillemin 2 is more than a century old; it is not only a rare survivor of France's coal-mining past but also a significant architectural and technological artefact in the history of industrialisation in Europe.

Between 1909 and 1911, the German coal mine Camphausen was expanded with a fourth headframe in reinforced concrete, a worldwide first at the time.

An offshoot of the South Limburg coal vein extends far beyond the German border. That explains why you can also find coal mines north of Aachen.

On 31 December 1974, the miners of the Oranje-Nassau I in Heerlen mined the last lump of Dutch coal, half a century ago.