ROSIA MONTANA (Alba county)
Rosia Montana is one of the famous area from Romania because of a big gold deposit in Europe (330 tones of gold and 1200 tones of silver)Rosia Montana is a small village in the forested mountains of western Romania, and the site of gold deposits believed to be the largest in all of Europe.The area has been mined for at least two millennia, from the time of Caesar to the days of Ceausescu, and owes its name – “red mountain” - to stream waters turned red from toxic runoff produced by 2000 years of gold mining.Though little reported outside the Balkans, the Rosia Montana project is a matter of intense controversy in Romania, in neighboring Hungary, and in Brussels where the mine is viewed by some as a test of Romania’s transition from a planned to a market economy.
Much of the debate centers on the need to use cyanide to extract pure gold from the low-density, widely distributed ore -- a method commonly used in over 400 gold mines around the globe, including Europe.
