1948–1989 The last great age of the minesPosledný veľký vek baní

The communist state nationalised the mines and then invested heavily in them, because a planned economy that wanted steel needed ore. Iron ore was worked in the valleys around Rožňava on a scale the town had not seen before, blocks of flats went up for the workforce, and the district's entire economy was tied to one industry. The mining museum in the town keeps the lamps, tools and mine maps from those decades, and it is worth understanding that it is not a curiosity: for seven hundred years there was very little else here to live on. What nobody planned for was what would happen when the ore stopped paying.Komunistický štát bane znárodnil a potom do nich veľa investoval, lebo plánované hospodárstvo, ktoré chcelo oceľ, potrebovalo rudu. Železnú rudu ťažili v dolinách okolo Rožňavy v rozsahu, aký mesto dovtedy nezažilo, pre robotníkov vyrástli panelové domy a hospodárstvo celého okresu viselo na jedinom odvetví. Banícke múzeum v meste uchováva lampy, náradie a banské mapy z tých desaťročí — a nie je to kuriozita: sedemsto rokov tu takmer nebolo z čoho iného žiť. S čím sa v pláne nerátalo, bolo to, čo príde, keď sa ruda prestane vyplácať.