San Luis Potosí on the Mercury and Silver Route of

It seems likely that the “Mercury + Silver Binomial etc…” nomination will get inscribed at the Seville WHC. If so, it will be the most geographically spread of any WHS and will extend across Slovenia, Spain and Mexico. The general “story” is that mercury mined from Idrija in Slovenia and Almadén in Spain was taken to San Luis Potosi in Mexico to assist the process of extracting silver from the ore mined there and the silver was then returned to Europe using the “International Camino Real” in each direction.

We haven’t yet heard that ICOMOS has de/referred it and it does seem to press all the right buttons UNESCO policy-wise with its trans-national nature. A potential problem might be whether it has proven possible to get the 3 states involved to produce a fully compliant set of dossiers and management regimes! To help this in Dec 2007 they even signed a separate Tripartite Agreement.. (Nb. Peru had also been asked to join with Huancavelica which was/is not yet on its T List but declined). As an aside - I find the title of the site (“Mercury and Silver Binomial”) somewhat perplexing. I guess “binomial” (= “2 terms”) refers to the 2 metals but why adopt this term which would normally only be used in a mathematical or biological sense in English? What does it add?

Adjidra and Almadén consist mainly of sites of industrial archaeology related to mining plus each of the town centers. That of San Luis Potosi (SLP) …