Idrija, the town that quicksilver built

Tour Anthony's Main Shaft (Antonijev rov), the old mercury mine and reason for the town's existence; visit the lacemaking school and the Idrija town museum in Gewerkenegg Castle; sample zlikrofi (Slovene ravioli), a local specialty; and just enjoy strolling through the streets of this pleasant, friendly and under-touristed town.

Quick Tips:

Idrija is 56 km (35 miles) from Ljubljana, and easily visited as a day trip from the Slovene capital or as a stop-off en route to other points; if you lack your own wheels, the public bus takes 75 to 80 minutes from Ljubljana (you might want to take some motion sickness tablets; there are many twists and turns along the way).

On arriving in Idrija, stop off at the helpful tourist information office at Lapajnetova 7 (tel. 386-05-377-3898) for directions; a town map costs about US and contains good info on local attractions, but isn’t absolutely necessary to find your way around.

Idrija hosts a lacemaking festival every August (in 2001, it takes place from the 24th through 31st), with exhibits and workshops; this most gentle of festivals is a splendid opportunity to buy directly from the crafters, some of whose work is of a very high level indeed.

There’s a multilingual Idrija web page at link

Best Way To Get Around:

Once you're in Idrija, two legs on the ground, one foot after another is the way to go; the town core is compact and easy to figure out.

In Slovenia, a ''gostisce'' (pronounced something like ''ghos-STISH-cha'') is similar to a gostilna (i.e., a country inn/trattoria), except that it offers beds to those who''d like to sleep off their meal overnight. Their quality varies, but the charming, professionally run Gostisce Barbara is one of Slovenia''s best. Prices are above average for the region, but the interiors are charming, the service is smooth and friendly, and the location can''t be beat - the Barbara is located in a historic building directly above the Anthony mine shaft in the center of town. The nicely appointed downstairs restaurant is just as welcoming and romantic, and a great place to sample the local specialty, zlikrofi (ravioli Slovene-style), along with many other Continental delicacies and a bottle of excellent local wine. Singles and doubles are reasonably priced for the location.

For a town of Idrija's size, the dining opportunities are uncommonly good. The budget-minded and seekers of local color are advised to head directly for the Gostilna Kos, a straightforward, old-fashioned pub near the river that serves up one of the best examples of the local delicacy, zlikrofi, which are Slovene-style ravioli filled with potatoes, chives and a bit of bacon (invariably described as "savory"). A large plate of zlikrofi and an accompanying salad will run you less than four US dollars. The Kos even has its own web page, in Slovene only (well, what did you expect): link

Both my guide, Uros Erzen, and me, crouching to avoid the tunnel’s low roof, noticed a sparrow-sized black bird flitting around in the cavern as water from the river above filtered through porous rock, dripping onto our rain slickers and hard hats. It wasn’t a canary, and it wasn’t a coal mine; but could it have meant something anyway?

We were a few steps down from the entrance to Anthony’s Mine Shaft, five centuries old in 2000 and the earliest part of an extensive tunnel network -- over 800 kilometers in all -- below Idrija. A few minutes earlier I’d begun my tour in the chamber where miners once gathered for roll call, now a room where visitors sit on benches and watch an introductory film about what was one of the world’s largest mercury mines.

Mercury is, of course, a toxic substance. Prolonged exposure to high levels, either in the form of vapors or absorbed through the skin, can result in nervous system damage, including mental disturbances, loss of balance, speech, vision and hearing problems, even comas and death. (There's a large psychiatric hospital on the northern edge of town; one assumes the siting wasn’t purely accidental.) Lung diseases were also a danger. In the early days, a man could only work five to seven years below before becoming too ill to continue.

At its peak, Idrija was the second largest mercury mine in the world, after Almaden, Spain, eventually yielding 13 percent of all the mercury ever mined; 150,000 tons. In the 19th century the town became a scientific research center as doctors came to study and treat the miners.

But all that’s history. In the 1970s, awareness of mercury’s health risks widened; in the ‘80s, the bottom dropped out of the market. Five centuries after the first shovels crunched into the earth, only about 100 kilometers of tunnels remain open. From a peak of 1200, about 110 workers are left; their job, to close up shop for good. Ore is no longer extracted. Over the next decade, Uros informed me, all 15 of the mine’s levels will be sealed; some of the galleries will be filled with water, some with concrete, to prevent the town from sinking beneath the massive excavations.

The tour goes out of its way to entertain, with several surprises along the way; kids shouldn’t be bored. The mine comes with its own legendary dwarf, Berkmandels, who, when in the mood, knocked on stones to point the miners the way to rich cinnabar veins. (The miners left him bits of food to stay on his good side.) Along the way, one encounters Berk himself, sort of (he lights up, he laughs).

The tour ends in the simple, perfect miners’ chapel, which took 15 years to build in the mid-18th century. It was a civil chapel, unaffiliated with a church; a place for the miners to stop after their labors to give thanks for another uneventful journey.

As Slovene tourist destinations go, Idrija, a town of seven thousand, is usually considered an afterthought, if it’s thought about at all. It’s 20 kilometers to the north of the more celebrated Karst area, and just a bit farther from the laid-back coast; to the north lie the Alpine beauties of Bovec, and to the west, near the Italian border, the rustic charms of the Goriska Brda wine country.

Idrija sits on the edge of the Idrija Fault, which separates Slovenia’s subalpine region from the porous Karst. The surroundings are a geologist’s playground; the land is a study in soil erosion, with scores of pines lying tumbled roots over teakettle into roadside gorges.

At first glance, beyond its attractive setting in a basin surrounded by high hills and low mountains, Idrija may not overly impress a visitor. But, like nature, its treasures like to hide. And since the locals aren’t inundated with tourists, they’re unfailingly gracious to any who happen by.

To understand Idrija, one must know that it is, or was, a source place of two very diverse materials: mercury from the mine, and snow-white bobbin lace, lace for purists, from a centuries-old tradition taught at home and in a celebrated school. Masculine and feminine principles epitomized. Yin-yang out the yin-yang. A dangerous substance extracted by men in a dangerous occupation, from dark tunnels below earth; and lace, knit in intricate patterns by women’s hands from white cotton thread in the sunlight. This legacy provides Idrija with a poetic balance, and the town screams authenticity from head to tail. A place like this couldn’t be phony if it tried. To journey here is to make a humble but rewarding pilgrimage.

Idrija, which has the low-key, almost somnolent vibe one finds in any smallish Slovene town, has an idiot-proof street layout: the town core is shaped like a short, fat fish, with bulbous Gewerkenegg Castle (former mine HQ) as the tail. Points of interest start at the junction of the Idrija and Nikova rivers and run in a more or less straight line down to the Idrija Town Museum located in cute old Gewerkenegg.

Mercury and Idrija have been linked from the latter’s birth; it’s the reason for the town’s existence. Even Idrija’s name derives from the Latin term for mercury, Hydrargirum, and the town seal features the familiar figure of the Roman messenger god posing on tiptoe. The liquid metal was discovered here in 1490; in 1508, when ore rich in cinnabar crystals (a mixture of 20 percent sulfur and 80 percent mercury) was found, the mine boomed and Idrija went along for the ride. Miners, who received wages substantially higher than the regional average, and managers flocked here from as far away as the Czech and German lands, all then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

History and museums aside, Idrija is also a contemporary town with a private life of its own. A flyer posted on a wall advertises, in English, a local house-party rave ("BE THERE OR YOU WILL REGRET FOR THE REST OF YOUR LIFE"). That weird, huge yellow postmodern structure at the river junction that looks like a central postal sorting center is, in fact, a middle school. Neat A-frame houses are built into the sides of hills, on many levels, forming a neat symmetry with the warrens below ground.

Besides lace and tourism, modern Idrija is home to several large manufacturers of electric motors and furniture; less celebrated than mining, certainly less dramatic, but undoubtedly healthier.

Idrija is also home to my favorite piece of Central European statuary. You can have your elaborate plague pillars: I’ll take Idrija’s modest fountain topped with a perfect little statue of a 19th-century miner, pickaxe and hammer in hand. All the town needs is a companion monument celebrating the Unknown Lacemaker, waiting for her man.

The lace school (Cipkarska sola) is in the center of things in Idrija, right next to Town Hall, housed in a handsome, solid three-story building of ivory-colored stone built with mine funds in 1876. Idrija isn’t the only Slovene town with a lace school, but this is the country’s largest and best-known, and the acknowledged center of Slovene lacemaking. Outside the school secretary’s office hang framed examples of lace from Malta, Finland, Portugal, Belgium and Italy; Slovenia’s style, whirling in intricate, hypnotic patterns like captured snowflakes, most closely resembles the Italian, and is in no way inferior to it or any of the others.

The history of Idrija lacemaking dates back over 300 years, when it was brought over by the wives of German and Czech mine workers and managers. To this day, just about all of Idrija’s women learn the craft in some fashion, starting at around age six, sometimes younger. The lace school teaches both pre-school and grade-school girls, and also runs programs for adults. Boys in the lace program aren’t unheard of, but, as one might expect, are very rare (and undoubtedly, thick-skinned).

On the day of my visit, the teacher, Dragica Cesnik, darts from desk to desk among the eight small girls, working in pairs in the clean, modern classroom, intently clicking seven pairs of wooden bobbins around a long pillow on which rests their handiwork. All use white cotton thread (colored thread is seldom used, and then mostly for export), with finer needles for finer work.

Telephone the lace school (Cipkarska sola) at (386-05) 71-313 to reserve a guided tour, or ask at the tourist office (if you don’t speak Slovene and no English speaker is around, some Italian or German would help).

Idrija's annual lace festival is held in late August (in 2001, it took place from the 24th through 31st) and is highly recommended for serious students of the craft, or admirers of lace in general.