Roșia Montană

The cultural, natural and archeological site of Roșia Montană is nowadays threatened by extinction due to the launching of an enormous mining project based on cyanide technology. Unexplored Roman mining galleries, churches and cemeteries, houses, a vast archaeological Roman and pre Roman heritage are subject to vanish. The presentation focuses on the drama of the natives confronted with expropriation, beyond the enormous risk of creating a dam out of rocks for a cyanide lake in the valley of Corna and the destroying of a non renewable resource, such as the historical one. The projects’ dimension is shown by overlapping the industrial area of Roșia Montană over the map of Bucharest: all the historical center of Romania’s capital would disappear. Nowadays, in spite of Roșia Montană being on the tentative list of UNESCO monuments, and in spite of the vivid protests of the majority of the civil society and organisms such as ICOMOS and the Romanian Order of Architects, the political pressure is huge: alterations of existing legislation that make possible forced evictions of locals opposing the project are being done.