Published: September 2009
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Laurium, Laurion, or Laureion is a small town in southeastern part of Attica, Greece and is one of the southernmost and the seat of the municipality of Lavreotiki, famous in Classical antiquity for the silver mines which were one of the chief sources of revenue of the Athenian state, and were employed for coinage; and notorious for the treatment of the slaves who mined it.
The mines were still worked in the early 20th century by French and Greek companies, but mainly for lead, manganese and cadmium. Jiannis Jakovides has repeteadly visited the now devastated site of the ancient and 20th century mines capturing in his vivid colour images the fleeing signs of the once tumultuous industrial place.