Years of coal mining in Zeche Hugo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, have left behind a one-hundred-and-fifteen-meter-high slag heap, the Halde Rungenberg.
In the French coal basin of Nord-pas-de-Calais, Germany's Ruhr and Saarland, England, Wales, and Belgium, coal was brought to the surface in hundreds of coal mines for many years. Today, coal mines have become heritage sites or have been demolished.
Years of coal mining in Zeche Hugo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, have left behind a one-hundred-and-fifteen-meter-high slag heap, the Halde Rungenberg.
The city of Carbonia rose in a completely remote area in Sardinia in 1938. It wasn't easy to think of a more striking name: everything here revolved around the coal mine, the first thing you see when you drive into the city.
A deathly silence blows through the streets of the mining village of Asproni. Halfway through the twentieth century, the last resident closed the door behind him.
The cobblestone section from Wallers to Hélesmes plays a starring role every year in Paris-Roubaix. But until a hundred years ago, wagons packed with coal thundered above the cobblestone strip.
With its three coal mines, the German city of Herten was, for a long time, the largest mining city in Europe. Schlägel Eisen is one of the mines that can still be found there.
A reinforced concrete headframe is all that remains of the Dutemple coal mine, which has operated for almost two centuries.
On the left bank of the Scheldt in Fresnes-sur-Escaut in Northern France, this centuries-old fire engine building bears witness to the ceaseless struggle of miners and engineers against the groundwater in the underground galleries.
The metal headframe and extraction machine of the Vieux 2 coal mine in Marles-les-Mines is the only remaining headframe preserved in the Béthune-Bruay region.
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A collapsed and flooded complex of mining galleries stretches between 600 and 800 metres below the cyclocross World Cup 2025 course in the northern French town of Liévin.
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