Bergbaumuseum, Knappenberg

The Schaubergwerk Knappenberg is an old mining tunnel turned tourist site in the village of Knappenberg, part of Hüttenberg in Carinthia. The iron-ore mine closed in 1978, and visitors now walk through a 900-metre-long heritage drift dating from 1567. Guided tours explain how miners worked underground, showing the simple tools and early lifting gear they used to haul ore. A free museum beside the tunnel displays miners’ clothes, lamps and rakes, and tells the story of the Hüttenberg Reiftanz dance. Upstairs a mineral display presents more than two hundred kinds of local stones, while Heinz Meixner’s former office sits nearby. The building itself, once the miners’ house and tunnel entrance, holds Maria Theresa’s 18th-century mining ordinance. Beyond the museum, protected relics include parts of the Barbara settlement and the Barbara church. The whole mining landscape, with its preserved tunnels and equipment, offers a clear picture of life in the old ironworks.