Roman fish-salting pools beneath the University of Malaga rectorate · Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA)

Malaga Roman Fish Salting Factory

Malaca

Garum FactoryHispania Baetica · Malaga, SpainBuilt 100 BCE

About

Strabo singled out this Baetican port for its salt, meat, and fish trade, and its very name comes from the Phoenician word for salt. Excavations under the University of Malaga's rectorate building, carried out between 1998 and 2002 while the old post office was being converted, uncovered twenty-seven separate salting vats lined with waterproof opus signinum plaster. Those vats once cured anchovy and sardine into garum shipped across the Mediterranean, and the surrounding slope down from the Alcazaba appears to have been terraced with still more basins. The industry had already defined the city's economy for centuries before Rome absorbed it.

What happened here

Rows of stone vats sunk into the ground beside the sea, and the smell reaches a long way inland. Small fish and the guts of larger ones are layered with salt and left in the sun for weeks; the liquid that separates off is drawn away as fish sauce and the residue is sold cheaply as paste. Grades run from a luxury sauce that costs more than good wine down to the version bought by everyone else. Tunny is netted in season from lookout towers on the headland, and the fishing, salting, potting and shipping all happen within a few hundred metres. Amphorae are stamped with the maker's name. Towns built on this are rich, and they are built downwind of themselves.