Part of the Coal Mining Museum in Zabrze: almost 5 km of underground workings of the former Queen Louise mine and the Main Hereditary Adit, with a boat route.
The Queen Louise Adit in Zabrze is part of the Coal Mining Museum, covering almost 5 km of disused underground workings of the former Queen Louise mine and the Main Hereditary Adit. Visitors go underground and sail by boat along the adit. On the surface, the layout of the mine buildings has survived, with the Carnall shaft.
The complex has three locations in Zabrze: at Wolności 408-410, where the chain bathhouse and the Carnall shaft stand; at Mochnackiego 12, by the Wilhelmina shaft; and at Karola Miarki 8, where the outlet of the Main Hereditary Adit is.
Surface buildings include a winding engine house with a working steam engine, a chain bathhouse from 1890, a water softening plant, an accumulator house, a compressor station and a 6 kV switchgear building. By the Carnall shaft stands a winding tower with a viewing platform at the top.
The mine was founded in 1791 as the state mine "Królewska", and in 1811 it was given the name Königin Luise Grube, that is Queen Louise, in memory of the wife of King Frederick William III, who had died a year earlier. In 1898 it produced 3.3 million tonnes of coal with 8,500 miners. Extraction ended in 1998, after 207 years.
The Main Hereditary Adit was designed to drain mines. Construction began on 23 June 1799 in the Bytomka valley, and the work, done by hand, was completed in 1863 with a link to the "Krug" shaft of the "Król" mine in Chorzów. The adit is over 14 km long and runs under Zabrze, Ruda Śląska, Świętochłowice and Chorzów. The original plan envisaged nearly 30 km.
The adit soon lost its original functions, because transport was taken over by roads and railways. The inlet on Miarki Street was filled in in 1953 and over the years silted up.
The first underground tourist route in coal mining in Poland was created here in 1965, in the West Field of the Zabrze mine, and operated until 1979. A new chapter began after 1999, when the first amateur group went down into the adit. Mining and construction works lasted from 2009 to 2018.
In 2014 the clearing of silt from a 2.5 km section of the adit was completed; an iron wagon, fragments of wooden channels and two hundred-year-old inspection boats were found there. The first workings were opened to tourists in June 2016, the next section in September 2017, and the last one, together with the longest underground boat trip in Poland, on 14 September 2018.
Since 2013 the complex has belonged to the Coal Mining Museum, together with the Guido Mine. The revitalisation received the Europa Nostra European Heritage Award in 2019, and in July 2020 the adit was recognised as part of the Historic Monument "Zabrze - the complex of historic coal mines".
The basic offer is three underground routes. The tourist route leads through the workings of the mine and the adit and shows the development of mining technology from picks to shearers. The family route includes a walk through a coal face, a demonstration of machinery and a ride on the Karlik mining train. On the water route part of the way is covered on foot, and 1,100 m is covered by boat, passing figures from Silesian legends, including Skarbnik and Utopek.
On the surface there are exhibitions: "Edison's Mine" on the role of electricity in mining, the history of mine lighting from the Neolithic to modern times, and the "Remarkable History" of the mine in 1791-1998. In the engine house stands a working steam engine from 1915 with a power of 2,000 horsepower, which served the Carnall shaft until 1990. The winding tower is 25 m high.
By the Wilhelmina shaft there are Park 12C, the children's mini-mine "Bajtel Gruba" and the Military Technology Park. About 900 m from the Carnall shaft stands the water tower in Zabrze.
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