Saint Peter in Maastricht

Sunday 2022/10/09

The Pietersberg has an interesting history, as mining used to take place here.

The Pietersberg is also the local mountain of Maastricht, similar to the Gurten in Bern. And here too, you can enjoy a magnificent view of the city and its surroundings. Which is quite special, as there aren't many mountains in the Netherlands.

A 200 km long maze of underground passages runs through the mountain, called the "Caves of Saint Peter", which can be visited - which is what we did today.

The labyrinth inside the mountain was created over the course of 800 years through the extraction of limestone for building material. The underground tunnels and caves also served as a hospital, bunker, and hiding place for art treasures and other valuable objects during the German occupation from May 1940 to September 1944. Among them was Rembrandt's Night Watch.

Since 1926, the company ENCI has been mining limestone at the Pietersberg and producing various types of cement in the adjacent factory. In 2018, ENCI Maastricht ended commercial limestone mining, and cement production was definitively discontinued in August 2020. The annual production capacity was about 900,000 tons of cement per year.

From 2010, ENCI, together with the municipality of Maastricht, the province of Limburg, and in close cooperation with Natuurmonumenten and the local community, implemented a "conversion plan" for the ENCI area. The quarry's remediation has now been completed.

In the north of Sint Pieterberg, the Fort Sint Pieter, built from 1701 to 1702, towers over the city.