Central Mining Museum

The Central Mining Museum at Sopron, 210 km W of Budapest on the eastern slopes of the Alpes, and 70 km south of Vienna holds the largest collection of mining artefacts in Hungary. It is located in one of the Baroque palaces of the Estaházy family, and it extends into the palace gardens which include a mosaic pavilion and remains of the city walls. The museum is concerned with the extraction of coal, natural gas, non-ferrous metallic ores and building stones. Reproductions of historic workings include ancient flint mines, medieval mines with narrow shafts and a large scale model of and early twentieth century mine that visitors can enter. Films showing miners at work are shown, and the museum displays some large hydraulic machines used in mines of various sorts in the mid- and late-twentieth century.