Potosí is a city in the southern highlands of Bolivia. Its long mining history is on view at Cerro Rico, a mountain and working silver mine south of the city. Potosí’s former mint, the central Casa Nacional de la Moneda, is now a museum dedicated to Bolivian art and history.

Potosí, known as Villa Imperial de Potosí in the colonial period, is the capital city and a municipality of the Department of Potosí in Bolivia.

On the Bolivian Altiplano, at more than 4000 meters above sea level, lies South America's most elevated town. Potosí is a mining town famous for the incredible riches that have been cut out of the Cerro Rico Mountain ever since 1545, when the Spaniards began with large-scale excavation

Potosí, city, southern Bolivia, 56 miles (90 km) southwest of Sucre. One of the world’s highest cities (elevation 13,290 feet [4,050 metres]), it stands on a cold and barren plateau in the shadow of fabled Potosí Mountain (also called Cerro Rico [“Rich Mountain”]), which is honeycombed with thousands of mines. Legend attributes its name to potojchi or potocsi, a Quechua word meaning “deafening noise,” or “crash.”

The city came into existence after the discovery of silver there in 1545 and quickly became famous for its wealth. Within three decades its population surpassed 150,000, making it the largest city in the New World. The population declined from a peak of 160,000 about 1650 as silver production waned, and a typhus epidemic in 1719 claimed the lives of some 22,000 residents. By the early 19th century, Potosí had fewer than 20,000 inhabitants, but the subsequent rise of tin mining again spurred growth

City of Potosí

In the 16th century, this area was regarded as the world’s largest industrial complex. The extraction of silver ore relied on a series of hydraulic mills. The site consists of the industrial monuments of the Cerro Rico, where water is provided by an intricate system of aqueducts and artificial lakes; the colonial town with the Casa de la Moneda; several patrician houses; and the barrios mitayos, the areas where the workers lived.

Potosí is the example par excellence of a major silvers mine of the modern era, reputed to be the world’s largest industrial complex in the 16th century. A small pre-Hispanic-period hamlet perched at an altitude of 4,000 m in the icy solitude of the Bolivian Andes, Potosí became an “Imperial City” following the visit of Francisco de Toledo in 1572. It and its region prospered enormously following the discovery of the New World’s biggest silver lodes in the Cerro de Potosí south of the city. The major colonial-era supplier of silver for Spain, Potosí was directly and tangibly associated with the massive import of precious metals to Seville, which precipitated a flood of Spanish currency and resulted in globally significant economic changes in the 16th century. The whole industrial production chain from the mines to the Royal Mint has been conserved, and the underlying social context is equally well illustrated, with quarters for the Spanish colonists and for the forced labourers separated from each other by an artificial river. Potosí also exerted a lasting influence on the development of architecture and monumental arts in the central region of the Andes by spreading the forms of a baroque style that incorporated native Indian influences.

Integrity:

Within the boundaries of the property are located all the elements necessary to express the Outstanding Universal Value of the City of Potosí, including the ensemble’s industrial mining and urban components such as the system of artificial lakes, the mines, the mineral processing mills, the architecture and urban form and the natural environment, all dominated by the majestic presence of Cerro de Potosí. No buffer zone for the property has been delimited.

Authenticity:

The City of Potosí is authentic in terms of the ensemble’s forms and designs, materials and substances, and location and setting. Still dominated by the majestic Cerro de Potosí, the “Imperial City” of Potosí’s streets, squares, civic and religious buildings, parishes remain as faithful witnesses of its great splendour and tell the important history of mining in the Americas