I visit the site almost 20 years ago. In those times, I started with my independent exploration of the outside world as I was 20-something years old. Slovakia was the first target because of its slightly exotic spirit and pristine landscape as compared to homeland Czechia. So, I traveled with a friend to hike and to overnight outside in the nature of Štiavnické Vrchy protected natural landscape area - actually its area overlaps with the buffer zone of the WHS. The mountains are of volcanic origin with the highest peak Sitno (1009 m), and the old mining town Banská Štiavnica is sitting in the middle. Because all the highways and main railway routes go outside the protected landscape, it keeps the area relatively unspoilt.

So, we travelled by train to Žiar nad Hronom, and walked in direction the protected landscape from the railway station and spent around one week by walking in this hilly landscape remodelled by human impact for centuries. The aim was to spend time in the "nature" and not so much in the UNESCO protected town. But I had slightly "distorted image" what was the WHS, and I thought that only the town and few ponds around were parts of this WHS. However, I checked the nomination text very recently and quite large area of 10 x 20 km large rectangle with the town in the middle was actually inscribed. It means that I spent in the WHS much longer time than I though! In the town of Banská Štiavnica, we spent only few hours (the town described in detail by other travellers already). The very center was just in the extensive reconstruction and it had quite unusual shape and structure to me as compared to mining towns I knew from Czechia (Jihlava, Kutná Hora). Besides the town, we spent most of our time in the rural landscape all around, climbing the highest mountain Sitno and other hills, visting interesting villages in the core zone such as Ilija with romanesque church, and, what is directly related to the OUV, seeing several ponds that were part of the water management of this mining landscape. The most popular for locals was Počúvadlianske jazero lake, but we enjoyed more smaller lakes such as Bančianske lake (PHOTO - me swimming in the WHS lake!).

Now after 20 years, I can compare what I saw in Banská Štiavnica protected lanscape with other mining lanscapes in the Central Europe (Goslar&Rammelsberg, Harz, Erzgebirge, etc.), and I must say that Banská Štiavnica is kind of special and it has its place on the WHS list.