About visitor guidance:

The Schwaz silver mine invites you on a journey through time. The 800-meter-long entrance through the Sigmund Adit, which was personally struck by Sigmund the Coin-Rich in 1491, takes you back 500 years in time to around 1500. This was when the famous Nuremberg Renaissance painter Albrecht Dürer created his works of art. He lived in a time of upheaval. It was the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era, when the Renaissance spread from Italy to Tyrol, Christopher Columbus discovered America, Ferdinand Magellan proved the spherical shape of the Earth with his circumnavigation of the globe, and the printing press was invented, enabling, among other things, Martin Luther’s Reformation.

The Schwaz underworld has also left very clear historical traces. In the 15th and 16th centuries, world history was written in this labyrinth, which is hundreds of kilometers long and was created by 12,000 miners working under the most difficult conditions with iron and hammers! The silver from Schwaz was the financial basis for the rise of the Habsburgs to become one of the most powerful dynasties in Europe, made Schwaz the second-largest town in the entire Habsburg Empire, and made Charles V the stately ruler of an empire on which the sun never set. And last but not least, it helped the Augsburg businessman Jakob Fugger to achieve his fabulous and legendary wealth. Experience this fascinating history in what was once the largest silver mine in the world!