I visited the Slovenian part of this WHS. Idrija lies just enough off the beaten track to be an authentic surprise. The town has a certain cuteness that stems from constructions that were made during the mining boom of the last centuries. As a reminder that this is no open-air museum, this is mingled with some communist-style housing blocks and rather busy traffic. The best though is its natural setting: in a valley surrounded by green mountains on all sides, with a river and streams running through town. I could not find a parking spot in the city center, so I left my car at a supermarket on the outskirts of town and had a pleasant walk along that river into the center.

The first stop on my sightseeing tour was the Gwerkenegg Castle. Though it looks like some feudal lord lived here, this Renaissance building was made to be the administrative headquarters of the mine. It now houses the excellent town museum. The entrance costs 3.5 EUR and includes a booklet in English detailing all rooms. In one of the first, a bowl full of mercury is shown, with an iron ball floating in it (mercury is 2 times heavier than iron). Interesting stuff. Other rooms include one full of black-ad white photos of daily life in Idrija in the early 20th century. We see girls lace-making at school, that other craft that Idrija is famous for. The women in town started doing this to earn some additional money for their husband’s miners' wages.

Unfortunately, no other mine-related sites are open to the general public, you’ll have to arrange for a tour somewhere to visit for example the pretty miner's house above town (see 3rd small picture). It looks quite big, but several families lived in it. The town center is worth a stroll for seeing the opulent Town Hall (1898) and little Mine’s Theatre (1769). For lunch I had the local žlikrofi with Gorgonzola sauce on top, very filling.

I then had to kill some time before the 3 p.m. tour at Anthony’s Shaft would start. I had seen about all there is to see in this small town, so I just enjoyed the sun and a cappuccino on a terrace. In the end, I was glad that I had waited for the tour to start, as this is where the mercury mining history comes alive. In all, it takes about 1 hour and 45 minutes, of which you spent over an hour underground. I found the guide very good, explaining each element clearly in both Slovenian and English over and over again. I was in a group of 10 tourists, from all over the world including a couple from Iceland.

Of course, during my WHS travels I have been to many mines before: gold, silver, copper, coal – the list is full of it. I wondered how the mining of mercury would be different. Well, it’s pretty similar. They hack and blow away the rocks to get at the precious metal, run little carts on rails to transport the material and build an elaborate underground system. What I didn’t know is that mercury not always comes in the form of little silver coloured balls: 70% of the mercury of Idrija is derived from a red stone, which had to be worked and heated afterward to get to the liquid metal. You can see both forms during the tour, the materials are still present on the mine walls. The mine wasn’t closed because there was no mercury anymore, but the prices had sunken so much that it wasn’t profitable anymore.