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The saying spice of life in English indicates something essential that makes life interesting, worth living. In Italian, the expression translates into il sale della vita, the salt of life. Salt is genuinely something necessary in our lives. Today we use it to flavor our dishes, for cosmetic products, and much more. But if we think about the past, our ancestors used it to preserve food for a long time, an essential technique for not starving in times when food was scarce.
Sicily produces and exports high-quality sea salt, rich in iodine. There is the Via del Sale, a cultural project born to enhance that particular humid environment that characterizes the coastal area of western Sicily with salt pans and mills. These territories offer spectacular views, where the water in the salt pans meets the blue of the sky. They are magical places!
Few but essential natural elements are required for the production of salt: seawater, wind energy, the heat of the sun, and a lot of patience. The seawater is conveyed into special tanks, different in size and depth, and left to evaporate thanks to the associated action of the wind and heat, to then be collected from the bottom in the form of large crystals of sodium chloride. The salt is then piled in heaps covered with terracotta tiles for the last phase of evaporation of the water. The characteristic mills, now disused, were used to rotate the spiral of Archimedes that carried the water from one basin to another or to crush the salt, turning it into dust. Today, thanks to the many innovations, producing salt is less tiring. However, the temporal phases of the passage from one tank to another and the wait for evaporation thanks to the wind and the sun have remained the same as they once were.
The salt pans of Trapani are a stop not to be missed if you intend to come to Sicily. A unique experience awaits you in the company of our expert guides who will accompany you to these fantastic places, where time seems to have stopped.
Contact Majolica to ask to include the salt pans in your Majolica Boutique Journey to Sicily!
