The First Gold / Ada Tepe
Spiral bead Ovchartsi Middle of II mill. BCE / gold. L – 1.3 cm, W – 2.37 g Archaeological Museum "Maritsa-Iztok" © Krassimir Georgiev, NAIM
Ada Tepe is the Europe’s oldest prehistoric gold mine located in Bulgaria’s Rhodope Mountains. From as early as 1500 B.C. until the end of the Bronze Age around 1000 B.C. the precious metal was mined here. The exhibition with the selected artefacts from the largest Bronze-Age hoard is the result of a 2016 study by the Austrian and the Bulgarian Academies of Sciences. A virtual reconstruction and finds from the mine document the lives of the people who worked there. The Valchitran Treasure which comprises gold objects weighing around 12,5 kilograms, forms the centre of the show. It symbolizes the wealth and the technical skills of the age. Masterpieces produced in the late Classical/Hellenistic period and during the Roman Empire document the importance of Bulgarian gold, which can look back on 3500 years of history.
Check out a video about this exhibition