The Kimberley Mine | The Big Hole

The Kimberley Mine, known as The Big Hole, is a vast scar left by man's extraction of diamonds in that area of South Africa for more than four decades.

Our memory associates diamond mining with a specific geographic location: South Africa. However, this activity is relatively recent in that area compared to the historical exploitations of India and Brazil, since it was not until 1871 when the discovery of large stones resulted in the immediate birth of the largest excavated mine in the world: a crater more than four hundred meters wide and over a thousand meters deep.

The Kimberley Mine, as it is known (also as "The Big Hole" in English), allowed the extraction of three tons of diamonds, for which twenty tons of earth had to be excavated; this titanic task was carried out by more than fifty thousand adventurers who settled in the area immediately attracted by the prospects of wealth.