Pernik is an honorary city of miners. Due to rich coal deposits and the hard work of its inhabitant, the city has become an important industrial center of Bulgaria. Today, the former glory and heritage of the mining culture are again trending in Pernik, which is a tourist center with the only Underground Mining Museum in Bulgaria and on the Balkan Peninsula.

The idea of the establishment of such a unique city museum appeared, when some inhabitants of Pernik visited the famous Wieliczka Salt Mining Museum in Poland in 1986. The Bulgarian museum was opened in the same year in the oldest 19th-century mine of the country. It is necessary to highlight that the coal deposits had been depleted in the mine 20 years before the museum was opened. The mine, along with the remaining equipment, was completely abandoned. Therefore, the founders of the museum just brushed the dust of time and the facility was ready to welcome its visitors.

Today, the museum is a popular tourist attraction in Bulgaria. It is visited by tourists from all over the world. At the same time, the locals are proud that they managed to acknowledge the heritage and the hard work of miners as well as the history of the coal mining industry of Bulgaria.

Although the mine is safe, every visitor is given a miner helmet at the entrance of the museum to recreate the authentic atmosphere. The underground mine with a length of more than 600 meters shows the visitors the history of coal mining since Prehistory when the coal was taken out by horses and large wooden carts, as normal equipment appeared later.

It is possible to visit the underground mine only with a guided tour. The visitors have all the safety instructions before entering the mine. It is necessary to have warm clothes for comfortable visitation, as the temperature under the ground rarely rises above zero. The Underground Mining Museum in Pernik was included in the List of 100 National Tourist Attractions in Bulgaria in 2013.