ROVNOST MINE (WERNER SHAFT, ORIGINALLY RUDOLF II SHAFT)
The sinking of the shaft named after Emperor Rudolf II began on 20 November 1736. The mine belonged to the Elias mining guild and was intended to exploit rich silver veins. By 1825 the shaft had reached 200 metres, after which work was halted.
With the development of uranium-colour production, the mine was revived in 1850. The shaft was deepened to 256 metres and, following a visit that same year by the geologist Abraham Gottlieb Werner of the Freiberg Mining Academy, it was renamed Werner Shaft.
Another crisis occurred around the turn of the 20th century, but the discovery of polonium and radium brought renewed expansion. In 1913 the mine was modernised with a steel headframe, upgraded surface facilities and electric pumps and hoisting equipment. In 1925–1926 it was deepened to the fourth level at 482 metres, and work continued even during the Second World War.
After the war, a camp for German prisoners was established near the mine, later replaced after 1948 by a camp for political and retribution prisoners. The original camp was moved in 1949 because it stood on a radioactive spoil heap that was subsequently removed and transported to the USSR. During the uranium-mining era the shaft was deepened to 661 metres, or 707.7 metres including an internal blind shaft, making it the deepest mine in the Jáchymov region. The mine was closed on 1 June 1961, prisoners were transferred to Příbram, and liquidation works continued until 1964.
Rovnost I shaft is connected to the Svornost Mine at a depth of 262 metres and today serves as a ventilation shaft. Surviving buildings include the changing house, gate guardhouse, former camp hospital (now Hotel Berghof), the shaft itself and the prisoners’ entrance. From the camp, once replaced by garden plots and cottages, a barbed-wire corridor led to the mine. The camp commander Albín Dvořák, nicknamed “Paleček”, forced prisoners to build a small castle near the shaft for his amusement; the structure survives in deteriorated condition.
A more recent tragedy is linked with Shaft 12, where in December 1983 an amateur mineral collector entered the abandoned workings and was buried by a collapse; his body was never recovered, and the site was later secured.
The mine also played a key role in the beginnings of the Jáchymov spa. In January 1904 physicists Stefan Meyer and Heinrich Mache discovered highly radioactive water here, and mining official Josef Štěp later found even stronger springs named after him. The water was first carried manually, then piped in 1908 to industrial facilities and from 1911 to the spa building, today’s Agricola Spa Centre.
