Salinae Ficoclenses

About

Salt pans on this Adriatic lagoon gave the town its very name, changed from Ficocle to Cervia after the acervi, or great heaps, of salt piled up in its evaporation ponds. Pliny catalogued Adriatic salinae like this one among the empire's standard methods of harvesting sea salt. Archaeologists date the excavated Roman-era saltern here to the second half of the 1st century CE.

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

• Pliny the Elder, Natural History 31.81-87
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cervia