The mining water management system, now inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List, was the world’s biggest water engine until the Panama Canal opened (15 August 1914).
It covered an area the size of 100,000 football pitches. It took almost 200 years to build, and for more than 200 years after that it enabled miners to extract gold, silver and other precious metals. It consisted of dozens of artificial reservoirs, known as tajchs, linked by hundreds of kilometres of surface collecting ditches and feeder channels and 2,000 kilometres of underground shafts and adits. Its heart and engine were the unique underground water-column pumps, driven by water from the tajchs. Today 24 tajchs are accessible, some with very pleasant grassy beaches. On a summer holiday it’s lovely to take a dip in their refreshing water, knowing that you’re swimming in the reservoirs of what was once the biggest water engine in the world. On a winter holiday you can skate on the tajchs or go cold-water swimming in them. The largest tajch is Počúvadlo, the highest is Ottergrund, the most beautifully coloured is Veľká Vodárenská, and the closest together are the three cascading tajchs Bakomi, Vindšachta and Evička.
