Trifter

Las Medulas is a stunning, beautiful and fascinating landscape that was created by the Romans some 2,000 years ago in northwestern Spain in the province of Leon.

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The Romans were not trying to create this beautiful landscape but were here to mine the gold available in the mountains. In order to get the gold the Romans practiced hydraulic mining techniques which netted them an estimated 800 tonnes of the precious metal at Las Medulas and left the area a devastated but quite fascinating landscape. Las Medulas was the most important gold mine in the Roman Empire.  

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The Romans mined the gold at Las Medulas for 2 centuries after they conquered the region in 25 BC. To get the necessary amount of water needed for the hydraulic mining the Romans are believed to have built at least 7 different aqueducts tapping water supplies from the nearby mountains.

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The water was used to strip away the soil and then sift the remnants for gold. To do this the Romans built a clever system of channels through which they would run the water creating tunnels which eventually wore away the mountains to their present form. Once a vein of gold was found and exhausted above ground water would be channeled through to retrieve the gold underground and look for the mother lode. Many of the tunnels and channels created for this purpose still exist today.

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Carucedo Lake which was produced by waste products blocking up a nearby valley eventually became a valuable fishing resource and is protected wetland today.

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In 1997 the World Heritage Committee designated Las Medulas as a World Heritage Site. The Committee decided to include Las Medulas on the basis that “the Las Médulas gold-mining area is an outstanding example of innovative Roman technology, in which all the elements of the ancient landscape, both industrial and domestic, have survived to an exceptional degree.”

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Today Las Medulas is a cultural park open to the public which has an Archaeological Information Centre that explains the site in detail to visitors. There are any number of hiking trails through Las Medulas which allows visitors to go back in time and get a glimpse of the Ancient Roman Empire and the effects it left.

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For another Ancient Rome marvel please see Marmore Falls: Rome’s Beautiful Gift to the World