A GLASS ROOF COVERING A 100-METRE-LONG BUILDING... 
From outside the visitors can see the huge glass roof covering TELLURE, and it is even more impressive from the inside of the building. It spreads on about 100 metres. The reception hall is flooded with a blueish light entering through the top. Visitors entering the hall can have a look at big posters representing their journey on the site and the themes and exhibitions presented at the moment.
In the hall, people rush to the multi-lingual guide devices that will allow each of them to get started on an extraordinary voyage which started here a little more than 4 centuries. ago
THE GROUND VIBRATES UNDER YOUR FEET, YOU ENTER IN THE HEART OF OUR MOUNTAINS...
A door opens...and the visitors are plunged in a sort of mysterious and dazzling crucible where the precious ore and all the famous minerals of Saintes-Marie-aux-Mines are formed. All of a sudden, the visitors' faces brighten up, stunned and in awe! The underground depths of Sainte-Marie just opened up and plunged them in a new world, that of ores and minerals. Sound effects and bright lights give the surprised visitors the impression of a living world, making the ground vibrate under their feet! But this is only the beginning of their journey...
TELLURE invites you to explore the underground worlds… What if the past was still living in the heart of our mountains ? A WORLD PRESERVED FOR MORE THAN 450 YEARS...
When you exit the hall, mirrors - no one knows how many of them there are- cause the visitors to be somewhat desoriented. the outside world does not exist anymore. You are now in the middle of the XVIth century. The atmosphere, odours, pictures, all contribute to help you cross time. Heinrich Gross' s extraordinary picture book, which pictures remind us of the life of the first minors, help recreate a loste, but at the same time familiar, universe....
SOUNDS OF VOICES...
Now we can hear their voices telling us how they dig though the rocks, how they get rid of the debris piling up at the mines' entries . It is in the middle of those debris that they find the precious ore making the minors' eyes sparkle, and in which the archaeologists of today find other treasures, bringing the past back... It is only at this very moment that the visitor becomes aware that he is in the middle of one of those piles of hearth called "halde". But we do not want to say too much about , we want the visitors to discover and find out for themselves as they proceed through that wonderful journey in the heart of the Val d'Argent Mountains.
THEY ARE STILL HERE...
Now we can hear other sounds and we all turn back... here they are...! But where? Just right here! We can hear them wisper,breathe, hit the rock. We can even hear the sound of small fragments falling on the ground... Then we hear sounds of footsteps, getting narer and nearer... The minors of the past are so close to us. Maybe are they still working here? One of the visitors says he saw one of them for real!...Well.... that's what he says... The minors are working. Yes, we are in the XVIth century!
A PAINTER AS A WITNESS... It is not easy to give a precise date for the pictures mentionned above. Commentaries tell us that they probably date back to around 156O. So, here we are, in the year 1560! Well...maybe! Maybe will we meet Heinrich Gross in the flesh in one of those galleries? Who knows? But let us continue our journey...
