POTOSI

Programs

City tour in Potosí

Silver Mines Tour

POTOSI

The Rich Hill - Sumaj Orcko, only miracle of the nature, prince methods the minerals, monster of wealth, overdraft among the years 1543 -1545. By the indigenous Diego Huallpa, after a series of events, their Spanish conquering masters, to the head of the captains Juan of Villarroel, Diego of Rye, 1st of April of 1545, were appropriated of the Rich Hill. It caused almost of immediate, so that there is the "Foundation" of the current city Potosí. Potosí derives of the word aymara "Potoj" that means roar or something that explodes and of the Quechua one "Sumaj Orcko" that is hill hermozo, the wealth of the rich hill was big and it could convince to own and strange. All accepted in exchange for the beautiful metal, the extraordinary hill has 5,185 m .a.s.l. An igneous rock which interior mass is impregnated of metallic matters in all addresses, it contains lead metals, tin, copper, iron, but it is distinguished mainly for its great abundance of the silver metal. The growth was increasing the same as the urban, although disordered and without a necessary planning. The intense cold and a half hard and arid geographer and but of 4,000 m .a.s.l., only to extract or to take out silver, in spite of all Potosi it was consolidating. In 1572 the viceroy Francisco from Toledo arrive, who plans the line and sat down the bases then for the economic development of this. Order them nuns they arrived to, they were increasing gradually.

Their evangelizing task toward feeling in the different confines of the territory of Potosi. Potosi, of hardly a hundred of Spaniards and indigenous, in little time was invaded by 160 thousand inhabitants around the year 1630. It was a figure that overcame to other cities of Europe and of other continents. The economic activity grew vertiginously. The surprising extraction of silver of the hill, the population's growth. The expansion of the internal and external trade with other American territories and the unexpected peak that reach the city, among other factors the Viceroy Toledo takes the construction of the first House of the Currency ahead in 1572 they put on the foundations in the vicinity of the square of the Rejoicing (Today square November 10). after almost 150 years of operation of the first house of Currency, in spite of the fact that the production of silver of the Hill Rich one period criticizes, the authorities real Spaniards conceived the project of starting the "recovery" of the valuable metal. Potosi, was the great alternative for those difficult times, its generous mountain was not even drained. The recovery of the silver started building the new House of the Currency in 1773. The organization technician - administrative of the House of the Currency you subject to strict regulations elaborated in the King's advice.
At the present time the House of Currency, is a renowned museum centre, documental, artistic and cultural. Declared by the UNESCO as Cultural Patrimony of the Humanity in the year of 1987

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