The legacy of mining connects across borders. This quickly became clear at the Living Lab on October 13, 2022. This heritage includes an extraordinary "underground landscape" with a boundless labyrinth of caves, grottos, tunnels and galleries, and gigantic open-pit mines: legacies of the mining of limestone, zinc-lead ores and coal.

A particular underground due to a specific geology that extends across national borders forms the basis of the euregional mining history and post-mining landscape (as depicted in the SUBTERRANEA project).

To explore the potential of this "underground landscape" from a cross-border perspective, we organized the event in collaboration with Prof. Rita Occhiuto from Lab. Ville Territoire Paysage at the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Liège and in the framework of the European COST Action "CA18110 Underground Built Heritageas catalyser for Community Valorization".

With 40 participants from the 5 regions of the Euregio Meuse-Rhine, the event was widely appreciated across the borders. Experts from different disciplines and private initiatives discussed in 3 thematic workshops on the Limestone Landscape, the Zinc & Lead Landscape and the Coal Landscape their personal experiences, values and possible lines of cooperation for a sustainable future of this common natural-cultural heritage.

After all, this is by no means just a relic from the past. Questions about tourist flows, rare species or rare earths as well as the search for a location for the Einstein Telescope are bringing the underground landscape back into the light of politics and the public.