Ore Mountains

The Ore Mountains lie along the Czech–German border, separating the historical regions of Bohemia in Czech Republic and Saxony in Germany. The highest peaks are the Klínovec in the Czech Republic, which rises to 1,244 metres above sea level and the Fichtelberg in Germany.

The area played an important role in contributing Bronze Age ore and, since the first wave of settlement in the Middle Ages, the nature of the Ore Mountains has been intensively shaped by human intervention and has created a diverse cultural landscape. In particular, mining with its tips, dams, ditches and sinkholes directly shaped the landscape and the habitats of plants and animals in many places. The region was also the setting of the earliest stages of the early modern transformation of mining and metallurgy from a craft to a large-scale industry, a process that preceded and enabled the later Industrial Revolution.