Closed coal mine of 214-year history, with Puțul I headframe complex listed as a national heritage monument being restored as a mining museum.
Mina Anina, located in Anina (formerly Steierdorf-Anina), Caraș-Severin County in the historical Banat region of Romania, was Romania's longest-running coal mine, operating from 1792 to 30 December 2006 — a continuous span of 214 years. Coal was first discovered in 1790 by a woodcutter, Mathias Hammer, in the Porcarul Valley, and systematic extraction began two years later under Habsburg imperial authority. The mine reached a depth of 1,200 metres, making it the deepest coal mine in Romania and one of the deepest in Europe, with galleries extending hundreds of kilometres underground.
It was one of the largest mines in Romania and extracted anthracite, brown coal, lignite, and oil shale; its oil shale output supplied the Crivina Power Station. The mine was owned by Miniera Banat, a state company. It closed following a fatal methane explosion on 14 January 2006 that killed seven miners.
The Puțul I surface complex is now listed as a national heritage monument (clasa A) and is undergoing restoration and conservation works for conversion into Romania's largest mining museum.
Coal was first discovered in the Anina Mountains in 1790 when Mathias Hammer, a woodcutter, found a black stone in the Porcarul Valley (Porcar Valley) and took it to the Mining Authority at Oravița. The coal proved to be among the highest-quality hard coal in Europe. Two years later, in 1792, systematic extraction began at Steierdorf — as the settlement was then known — under Habsburg imperial management. The founding of a permanent mining community had been prepared in 1773 when 34 families of woodcutters and charburners were brought from Styria (Steiermark), Austria, to work in the forests near Oravița; the name Steierdorf, meaning the village of the Styrians, derived from this origin. Subsequent waves of settlers arrived from Slovakia, Bohemia, Spiš, and other parts of the Habsburg lands.
In 1846, the mines came under the administration of the Imperial Treasury (Montanaerar). In 1854, the mining assets of Steierdorf-Anina, together with those from Anina, were transferred to the imperial-royal Society of Privileged Austrian State Railways (k.k. privilegierte Österreichische Staatseisenbahn-Gesellschaft). Under this operator, a major recovery and development programme was initiated, including construction of iron and steel processing facilities in the Gârliste Valley and the establishment of the Anina colony, which took its name in 1858. Administrative independence was granted on 1 November 1859 when the settlement received its own municipal administration, with Franz Hirspeck, chief mining foreman, as its first elected mayor.
The Oravița–Anina mountain railway, constructed in 1863, became the oldest mountain railway in Romania and provided the essential transport connection for coal and supplies. The mine expanded through the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. On 7 June 1920, the worst mining accident in the history of Anina up to that date — and at the time one of the most serious in all of Europe — resulted in 217 victims. The mine continued operating through the interwar period, the Second World War, and the communist era, during which it came under full state management. The settlement received the status of an independent town under the name Anina in 1952, with former satellite colonies becoming districts of the new town.
In the 1980s, the communist government of Nicolae Ceaușescu launched a major project to exploit Anina's vast oil shale reserves — estimated at 728 million tonnes — by constructing the Crivina Power Station, the first oil shale-fired power station in Romania, with a capacity of 990 MW. The project required the mine to supply approximately 4 million tonnes of oil shale per year to Crivina.
At closure, the mine had galleries reaching a depth of 1,200 metres, making it the deepest coal mine in Romania and one of the deepest in Europe, with galleries totalling hundreds of kilometres in length. Remaining reserves at closure amounted to over 840 million tonnes of anthracite, lignite, brown coal, and oil shale. The mine was owned at the time of closure by Miniera Banat, a state company specialised in the management of coal mines in the Banat region.
On 14 January 2006, at 05:30, a powerful methane explosion occurred at Puțul I in the Sector III Vest of the mine, killing seven miners — Dănuț Pușcău, Daniel Vânău, Virgil Schneider, Matei Izvernariu, Gheorghe Marișescu, Marc Ioan Vasile, and Daniel Cristian Bălan — and injuring seven others. This accident prompted the decision to close the mine. Production ceased permanently on 30 December 2006, after 214 years of continuous mining.
The surface complex of Puțul I, which comprises the winding tower (Turnul de molete), the steam winding engine house, the lamp room, extraction and ore-handling structures, workshops, and social facilities, was listed as a national heritage monument of Class A (cod LMI CS-II-m-A-10962). The winding tower is notable for having been heightened and rotated 90 degrees from its original position during the mine's operational life. Following closure, the Anina city administration initiated a major restoration and conservation project for the Puțul I complex with the aim of establishing Romania's largest mining museum on the site, covering an area of approximately two and a half hectares. Plans include a subterranean visitor circuit using the existing shaft collar to a depth of approximately 27 metres and the Stolna coast gallery (approximately 70 metres in length), providing access to the underground workings. Anina was designated a local tourism resort, and the museum is intended to be part of a wider heritage circuit including the Oravița–Anina railway.