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An educational visit for the team of 1st Geniko Lykeio Vrilission

Katowice and Bochum, the places where our Comenius partners live, have a long history in coal mining. This was the incentive that made us search our area to see if Attiki, the area where Athens and Vrilissia are, has something in common concerning mining. And we found it. It’s Lavrio (Laurium in Latin), a mining town 60 kilometres from Athens, which used to offer plenty of jobs. So, we arranged a visit to the Handicraft-Industrial Educational Museum based in the grounds of the Technological and Cultural Park of Lavrion. Here is a description of what we learned and did.

Ancient times

The region of Lavrio was the largest centre of mining in ancient times. The systematic exploitation of the area's mineral wealth began in 3200 BC and continued without a break until the end of the archaic period in the sixth century BC. In the Bronze Age (2800-1100 BC), the mines of Lavrio supplied all the great cultures of the Aegean (the Cycladic, Minoan and Mycenaean) with silver, lead and copper. In the Classical period (fifth and fourth centuries BC) the exploitation of the mines by the Athenian state became particularly important for the financing of the great projects of the Golden Age of Athenian Democracy, and for the building of its fleet during the Persian Wars. Silver from Lavrio contributed to the strong foundations of the Athenian state because it made possible the minting of the famous silver coin, the 'owl'.

The two sides of the coin

Throughout almost the entire region, a host of monuments from the Classical period bear witness to mining activity. Underground mining galleries, wide mineshafts, and the ruins of metal workshops which processed and washed the ore in large outdoor water cisterns, ore washeries and ruins of metallurgical workshops with furnaces to smelt the ore and produce the metal etc., are all visible on the surface. By the third century AD, mining had entered a period of decline.

The main minerals contained in the metalliferous deposits of Lavrio are zinc and silver-lead, iron pyrite and BPG (blended pyrite and galena). There are also small quantities of free minerals such as sulphur, silver, gold, copper, bismuth and other sulphur mineral.

Modern times

The renaissance of modem Lavrio began in 1860, with the re-smelting of the ancient spoil-heaps, the reopening of the mining galleries and the development of new metallurgical work. Then, the Greek Metal Works Company of Lavrio (1873-1917) and the Compagnie Francaise des Mines du Laurium or the 'French Company' as it was widely known (1875-1981) started operating and controlling the mines and their products. The town of Lavrio began to expand. It was initially a small settlement for workers, but soon grew into the first 'company town' in nineteenth-century Greece. Indeed, Lavrio is the only example in Greece and the wider region of the Mediterranean of a company town created in a deserted region to meet the needs of industry.
The companies provided health care for their workers, opened schools and built churches, and in addition, constructed the port and the Athens-Lavrio railway.

After the Second World War, mining fell into decline in Lavrio and elsewhere. The mines closed in the 1970s, while the metallurgical industry finally ceased functioning in 1990. The closure of the industry caused a wave of unemployment in the area and affected the whole region.

Nowadays, Lavrio preserves its historical significance. The Ministry of Culture has declared the 19^th century installations (building and equipment) and their grounds as Greek Industrial Heritage and the Technological and Cultural Park of Lavrion was established.

The Handicraft-Industrial Educational Museum

The objective of the Handicraft-Industrial Educational Museum is to collect, preserve, research and exhibit materials, for educational purposes, which relate to the handicraft and industrial past of the region and also by extension to the technological, economic, social and cultural history of Greece.

We took part in a programme called “The mining and metallurgical procedures in the former French Mining Company of Lavrion” and we followed the production of lead and silver from quarrying to the final product. We gathered information on how each stage of the process went and on the people who worked in the galleries: what they were specialized to do, their working conditions, what protective measures they took and how they stuggled to keep the industry operating. Most of the information was given by a nice former miner, who had been working there and had lived all the events. After the research, each team presented its findings.

The visit to the Technological and Cultural Park ended with a round of the grounds. Here are some photos:

Afterwards, we went to the town of Lavrio, we looked around the neoclassical buildings and, of course, had something to eat and drink! It was a wonderful experience.

(sources: http://www.ltp.ntua.gr http://www.bbem.edu.gr and http://whc.unesco.org/en/tentativelists/1789/ )