The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives
The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives

The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives

The old Minas de Riotinto locomotives

Martian landscape in the heart of Spain

Minas de Riotinto, Spain

We are talking about over 5000 years of mining history in this area. The landscape has been changed forever, and it looks at some places like a alien planet where red, yellow, purple mingle with green, gray and ocher.

The ten abandoned trains account that the site today are only a small part of this industrial landscape that has been suddenly stopped in 1974. At its peak, there was more than 150 trains who were traversing the long and winding road which stretched over 84 km. Each train had between 20 and 50 cars full of pyrite.

The mine located in the town of Minas de Riotinto, as we know it today, began operating in 1875 and stopped almost 100 years later. Today, if the plant is closed, a museum exists on the site.

Related content

The Fonte da Pipa palace
Loulé, (Portugal)

Known for its carnival and market of great beauty, Loulé is a city of 70,000 inhabitants located in the south of Portugal, in the Algarve region.

It is built between 1878 and 1897 the small castle of Pipa palace which will never be...

The abandoned waterpark in Piedmont
Piedmont, Quebec (Canada)

Once upon a time, a small piece of land bordering Autoroute 15 in Piedmont came to life every summer as a place of amusement. The Cascades d'Eau Piedmont, home of the Laurentian's iconic giant faucet, was Quebec's oldest water park when it ceased...

Hotel Adler, the abandoned bathhouse - Photo by Diane Landro
Sharon Springs, New York (United States)

The 150-room Adler Hotel on the northern edge of the village with its Spanish style architecture was the last great hotel built prior to the great depression in Sharon Springs. The five-story hotel opened in 1927 and closed after the 2004 summer...

The old Conveyor dock's tower
Montréal, Quebec (Canada)

So you might think the old Conveyor dock's tower straight out of the fourteenth century, but you're wrong. The pier on which it is located was built in 1956-1957 and was one of the last marine works at the port of Montreal before it does change...