Rosia Montana has its first touristic promotion website, revealing eight cycling routes and mountain camping, information on access, accommodation and patrimony sites. Tourists who will come in this area will be also able to attend several rural tourism activities such as hay mowing or cow milking.
The www.traicurost.ro website was launched on the initiative of several locals in Rosia Montana and Corna and of some youngsters from other cities, from the need of providing the area with a varied and unitary development, starting from alternative tourism patterns. According to one of the initiators, photographer Edmond Kreibik, the touristic site proposes a different type of accommodation, leaving behind the usual traditional accommodation units and offering an innovative tourism where travellers are involved in mountain activities and can know and experiment the area’s cultural, social and economic potential.
Tourists can enjoy eight cycling routes and mountain trips, interactive maps and GPS routes next to other information related to accommodation, patrimony and photos.
The project aims at contributing to the process of social and economic reconstruction of the local community in Rosia Montana, a region mostly famous for the mining and the controversies of cyanide pollution.
Tourists will be able to further enjoy sleigh rides, hay mowing, cow milking or managing a trout farm. Locals also plan to host film screenings on the topic of Rosia Montana right in their houses’ courtyards.
Rosia Montana is a commune in Alba County, in the Apuseni Mountains of western Transylvania, 130 km away from Cluj-Napoca, 80 km away from Alba Iulia and 90 km from Deva.
The rich mineral resources of the area have been exploited since Roman times or before. The state-run gold mine closed in late 2006 before Romania’s joining the EU.
The intention of Canadian-based Gabriel Resources to open new mine stirred wide controversies and protests, on one hand over the extent to which remains of Roman mining would be preserved and over fears of cyanide pollution and on the other, over the benefits that mining would bring to this poor and underdeveloped part of the country.
The campaign against mining at Rosia Montana was one of the largest campaigns over a non-political cause in the last 20 years in Romania, with tens of NGOs speaking out against the mining project. After nationwide protests in the autumn of 2013, the Chamber of Deputies eventually rejected the project on 3 June 2014. Moreover, Rosia Montana has been classified as a historic site of national importance, by an order of the Ministry of Culture issued on 30 December 2015, thus banning any industrial activity in the area.