Today we traveled to Kutna Hora and saw the beautiful churches and silver mines. After being in a metropolitan area with Prague, Kutna Hora was a big change in pace. While it was still touristy, many of the streets were empty and it gave us a great insight into rural Prague. While there, we saw the bone church and St. Barabara’s Cathedral. Both of these sites contained impressive architectural and engineering feats. In the bone church, there were carefully placed bone stacks from medieval Kutna Hora inhabitants. Standing in this church felt offsetting as it was hard to grasp the shear amount of people needed to create such massive artwork. St. Barabara’s Cathedral was equally impressive due to the shear size of the church.
The last place in Kutna Hora that we visited was the Silver Mine. The reason the town was so prevalent was due to this mine and we got the chance to actually explore the mine. Walking through the mine, we got see ancient excavators and tunnels that miners walked through. Even with modern technology (lights, walkways, etc.) it was still incredibly difficult to traverse the mines. When they were using the mine, they only had dim lamps and now maps to figure out where they were. They used slides and shutes to access different areas of the mines and were often trapped in tight places. Because of these conditions, most miners died while mining. As mentioned by our tour guide, getting ventilation to deeper areas was incredible difficult. Carbon dioxide builds ended up filling the lower regions and miners would suffocate without understanding why. These mines were extremely dangerous but valuable to Kutna Hora and the rest of Prague.
Swanson School of Engineering 