Monumento Natural las Médulas

AIRVŪZ STAFF NOTE : AirVuz contributor Airviewstudio brings us this excellent drone video from a famous former gold mining area in northern Spain known as Las Médulas. It's located in the Aquilanos Mountains (part of the Cantabrian range) in the Province of León. The landscape here was transformed by gold mining under Roman rule beginning in the first century AD. The mining technique, which turned Las Médulas into the largest open-pit gold mine in the Roman Empire, involved using large quantities of water to undermine the gold-rich rock formations.

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What seemed like it was going to be a day lost due to the fog that accompanied us throughout the trip, ended up becoming a spectacular day. Just over an hour of respite allowed us to take these spectacular images. Welcome to LAS MÉDULAS.

In Bierzo, northwest of the Montes Aquilanos and along the valley of the Sil River, is Las Médulas, a fantastic landscape resulting from Roman gold mining, and declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

Its reddish impression simulates a sinuous and mysterious landscape. No one would say that the steep cliffs hide, beneath their bowels, the gold of the Romans.

Mining exploitation silenced for centuries, the site of Las Médulas becomes a beautiful landscape of great tourist attraction, complete with the museological infrastructure of an archeology classroom. Here is a detailed description of the time when the largest open pit gold mining in the entire Roman Empire continued to operate.

Las Médulas offers visitors, in addition to being a place of extraordinary beauty, the opportunity to discover a curious and complicated exploration system that the Roman geographer and naturalist Plinus the Elder called "ruin montium."