Potosí is the an outstanding example of a major silver 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 more than 13,000 ft (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.
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By Kenneth Maxwell
A decade after the Spanish Conquistadores toppled the Inca Empire (1532-34), an indigenous Andean prospector, Diego Gualpa, in 1545, stumbled onto the richest silver deposit in the world on a high mountain of 4,800 meters (15,750 feet) in the eastern cordillera of the Bolivian Andes.
Here in the shadow of what the Spaniards called the “Cerro Rico” (“Rich Mountain”) at 4,000 meters (13,200 feet) a mining boom town quickly developed. By the end of the sixteenth century, it had become one of the largest and the highest cities in the world, and in 1561, Philip ll of Spain, decreed that it should be known as the “Villa Im