I visited this WHS by car in 2023. To make sure not to miss out, this WHS requires an advance booking by calling at least a number of days before: 1) to make sure the mine is open and accessible on the day you intend to visit, 2) to make sure that a tour in English is available, 3) to make up your mind whether you want to pay for 5 guided tour tickets + the entrance fee (highly recommended to visit alone and have the guide to yourself) or if there is a particular day with other people prebooked to share costs.

I would like to point out right from the start, that not only tourist infrastructure is lacking in Rosia Montana, but almost any kind of infrastructure whatsoever. The roads to get there are the winding type, one-lane each way, and lots of slow heavy trucks, so allow enough time to get there safely without missing your booking. Most staff, including the very unique engineer-guide, speak very little English, restaurants are non-existent, all the facilities except the mine are crumbling and extremely old, and floods and landslides are very common all year round. Make sure to bring an extra jacket as the temperature is cold at Rosia Montana even in summer, and drops even more inside the mine. The engineer-guide is quite peculiar but once you get accustomed to his irony/satire and his accent, you'll definitely get an honest in-depth tour about the pros and cons of Rosia Montana as a UNESCO WHS and the pros and cons of heavy industrial mining and/or logging. The clear con is that Rosia Montana has become or is clearly becoming a ghost town and even with better funding and restoration works, most probably it will always be the least-visited WHS in Romania.

Although the highlight of this WHS is the Roman mine, the whole mining landscape around is included but not much of it is accessible, firstly because of the parts under contract/dispute with the Canadians, and secondly because most of the roads are just winding uphill walking trails. Even with a rental car, I wouldn't have gone as far as man-made disaster of Geamana. Through the ages, gold mining shaped the surrounding landscape of Rosia Montana, although this essentially meant exploiting nature so much that the whole place was doomed from a natural point of view. The only exceptions which can still be explored are the numerous mining corridors which look like "caves" as well as artificial lakes (the most scenic probably being Taul Mare or the nearby Taul Anghel). Information boards in general, but especially at these "secondary" sites are non-existant, and the only ones you'll find closer to the mine are only in Romanian (including the only one mentioning UNESCO inscription next to the ticket booth; top left photo). With a few information boards, wooden boardwalks and sign-posted walking trails (and some basic infrustructure such as toilets and at least a cafeteria), the surrounding area would be much easier to explore and appreciate and could easily be compared to the upper areas of Banska Stiavnica in Slovakia for example.  

The old diorama inside the simple museum, gives a better idea of the sheer size of the gold mining landscape before gold mining started till present times. Apparently, different artefacts found here prove that gold mining in the Rosia Montana region started well before Romans, although on a much smaller scale. Most of the golden Thracian artefacts on display in different museums in Bucharest and in Sofia most probably came from this region. The guided tour down the Roman mine explores just a mere fraction of the huge underground network of tunnels developed by the Romans. Through experience and incredible skill, the Romans followed the "veins" in the rock which they believed would yield the most gold or other precious metals, and dug further using wooden frames as supports (built by felling the surrounding forests), and impressively digging rhomboid shaped, layered, zig-zag tunnels. The guide will also show you a few tiny holes in the walls which are believed to have been filled by small oil lamps for lighting (bottom left photo). The best archaeological remains found in Rosia Montana are no longer in town and at best can be seen in several museums worldwide unless they don't form part somebody's private collection. That said, in the Rosia Montana museum there is a good collection of old photos showing how gold mining developed in much more recent history. Of the few industrial tools and artefacts on display, I particularly liked the old logs carved manually to create "stairs" (using those to descend to different parts of the labyrinth of dark mining galleries gives you an idea of how dangerous even the simplest things were). Unfortunately, the most interesting finds such as the wax tablets, are no longer in Rosia Montana (only photos of a couple of them are on display). However, there is a good collection of limestone tombstones from the necropolis, and a number of industrial machines used for gold mining, as soon as you exit the mine. Compared to other European mining sites on the WH list, I really enjoyed my visit and I think it deserves its place on the WH list to preserve it for future generations.