In the French coal basin of Nord-pas-de-Calais, Germany's Ruhr and Saarland, England, Wales, and Belgium, coal was brought to the surface in hundreds of coal mines for many years. Today, coal mines have become heritage sites or have been demolished.
In the 19th century, the tentacles of the Walloon coal industry in Belgium reached deep into the German Ruhr area.
Three striking headframes from three different eras stand in the German Ewald coal mine, which closed its doors in 2000.
The iron headframe above the Pluto-Wilhelm mine in the German Ruhr area immediately evokes the Zollverein headframe in Essen, which has been declared a World Heritage Site. This counterpart is threatened with demolition.
Years of coal mining in Zeche Hugo in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, have left behind a one-hundred-and-fifteen-meter-high slag heap, the Halde Rungenberg.
The city of Carbonia rose in a completely remote area in Sardinia in 1938. It wasn't easy to think of a more striking name: everything here revolved around the coal mine, the first thing you see when you drive into the city.
A deathly silence blows through the streets of the mining village of Asproni. Halfway through the twentieth century, the last resident closed the door behind him.
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