Places

Places significant as origins, type localities, deposits or production centres.

• Bushveld Igneous Complex

  One geological intrusion holds most of the world's platinum, and there is no comparable second.

• Carrara

  A district in Tuscany quarried for white marble since Roman times.

• Coalbrookdale

  Where iron stopped being made from trees.

• Cornwall

  A peninsula in south-west Britain, one of the ancient world's principal sources of tin.

• Jingdezhen

  A thousand years of porcelain from one town, and the material Europe spent two centuries trying to reproduce.

• Murano

  Glassmaking concentrated on one island, partly for fire safety and largely to stop the knowledge leaving.

• Potosí

  One mountain of silver financed an empire, at a human cost that is still being counted.

• Ruhr

  Coal, coke, iron and steel in one basin — and the industrial region that two world wars were partly about.

• Salar de Atacama

  A salt flat in the driest desert on Earth, holding a substantial share of the world's economically recoverable lithium.

• Sheffield

  Crucible steel and stainless steel were both invented here, a century and a half apart.