Coal mines

Three striking headframes from three different eras stand in the German Ewald coal mine, which closed its doors in 2000.

The iron headframe above the Pluto-Wilhelm mine in the German Ruhr area immediately evokes the Zollverein headframe in Essen, which has been declared a World Heritage Site. This counterpart is threatened with demolition.

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 emerged in a completely remote area of Sardinia in 1938. It wasn't easy to imagine a more striking name: everything here centred around the coal mine, the first thing one sees upon entering 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.