Pomorie Salt Pans
About
Founded by colonists from Apollonia on a narrow peninsula whose very name meant 'near the salt,' this Black Sea town built its fortune on shallow lagoon salt pans still worked today. Rome absorbed it into Thrace around 45 CE, and under Trajan the town grew enough to win city status and mint its own coins. Roman house foundations and heaps of amphora sherds have turned up across the settlement. Salt harvested here later supplied Constantinople itself.
What happened here
Shallow pans are cut into the flats behind a beach or a lagoon and filled at high tide through a gate. The water is walked through a sequence of pans, each shallower and saltier than the last, and the sun does the rest over the summer. In late season the crust is raked into ridges, left to drain, then carried off in baskets. The work is hot, glaring and hard on the feet, and it is done by contracted labour on a short season. Salt preserves fish and meat, cures hides and pays part of the state's revenue, so the pans are regulated and often leased from the state. A salina needs sun, wind and a tide, and it shuts down entirely when it rains.
Sources
Nearby
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