Falun
The Great Copper Pit
Portrait
The Great Copper Mountain supplied two thirds of Europe's copper in the seventeenth century and funded Sweden's period as a great power; the mine collapsed in 1687 on a midsummer holiday when nobody was underground. Falu red, the paint on wooden houses across Scandinavia, is a byproduct of the ore, and the open pit is 95 metres deep and visitable.
If you like this city