It is the largest mining machine ever built: the F60 overburden conveyor gantry in Lichterfeld near Finsterwalde. The 500 metre-long and 11,000 tonne technical tour de force was saved from detonation at the end of the 1990s. Today, the “lying Eiffel Tower” is an open visitors mine and a very special attraction for tourists. 

Industrial culture contributes to preserving the industrial past and transitioning to the future. It also helps the region develop, builds an identity and gives it a new tourism profile. Besucherbergwerk F60 (F60 Visitors’ Mine) is an impressive example of this. We owe it to a handful of enthusiasts, who recognised the gantry’s potential after the Klettwitz-Nord mine was closed in 1992, that it has been preserved today. The gantry not only symbolises the region’s industrial history, it is also emblematic of the structural change. Initially, the project had more opponents than supporters. The F60 project became a flagship of IBA see in 1998. Since then, the municipality of Lichterfeld-Schacksdorf has owned the gantry. It had a use concept developed for the “lying Eiffel Tower”. By 2010 alone, well over half a million people had visited F60. In addition to guided tours of the gantry, it is also used as a venue for concerts and exhibitions. Artist Hans Peter Kuhn also decorates the gantry with a lighting design, enhancing what was once the world’s largest mobile machine with metamorphic sounds of operating noise. F60 has become the hallmark for the region’s liberation from the destroyed mining landscape and increasing attractiveness, not just for tourists.