Coal mines

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.

In 1847, the coal and steel industry in the German Ruhr area reached cruising speed as industrialist Franz Haniel erected a coal mine in Essen.

When the northern French coal mines were nationalized after the Second World War under the Houillères du bassin du Nord et du Pas-de-Calais, rationality and efficiency were the order of the day, including in the mining towns.

The 43-metre-high headframe of the Saint-Amé mine reminds us of the turbulent coal history of the northern French municipality of Liévin, near Lens.

After the dismantling of fosse 9 in Roost-Warendin, only the 61-meter-high headframe remained.

At the end of the last century, coal mining in the German Saarland seemed unlimited. For example, the Göttelborn mine was expanded in 1994 with a ninety-meter-high headframe, which was then the highest in the world. Göttelborn was ready for the future.

Anyone on their way to the top of the Colline Notre-Dame du Haut in Ronchamp, France, to visit Le Corbusier's chapel will come across another concrete gem at the foot of the mountain: the headframe of the Puits Sainte-Marie coal mine.

The Prosper coal mine was the longest active in the German Ruhr area. The mining giant was named after its director, Duke Prosper Ludwig von Arenberg, in the nineteenth century.

The overgrown ruins and collapsed roofs of the French Arthur de Buyer coal mine do not suggest that a French record was broken here in 1900.