A mining legacy

Countless buildings in Budapest, including the 1902 neo-Gothic Parliament building (pictured), were built with limestone mined from the Kőbánya district, meaning the ‘stone mine district’, on the Pest side of the city.

Centuries of mining, starting in the Middle Ages and dwindling down towards the second half of the 19th Century, carved out an underground cellar system of more than 32km, around 30m below street level.

When wells and chambers in the lower parts of the mine flooded in the mid-1990s, the local government asked a small group of divers to clean up the underwater areas. The divers realised that some of the chambers could be perfect for recreational diving.