The stay in Margherita di Savoia “Terme” offers a good opportunity to visit the Saline: the largest and spectacular sea Saline existing and still working in Europe, first both by extension and production.

The scenery is boundless: four thousand hectares of humid zone extending in parallel to the coast for approximately 20 km, the 85% of which constitutes a natural protected Reserve of international value. It displays to the visitors an unusual and wonderful scenery: mountains of bright white salt, iridescent and sparkling water basins under the beams of the sun; the air, rich of iodine, is highly strengthening.

SHistorically the Saline does not have a precise date of birth, but it is supposed that around the 200 A.C it was already a productive inhabited place colonized by the Illyrian, people coming from the Dalmatia, which, landing on these lagoonal lands, exploited the ancient Salpi lake, enriched with salt by the frequent winter sea-storms and by the argillaceous ground that allowed the stagnation of the salty waters; the sea, inexhaustible raw material, and the abundant evaporation advantaged from the frequent warm winds, together with a scarce seasonal rainfall, concurred to the formation of a discreet deposit of salt in a natural way.

This process of crystallization has been almost identical through the centuries and the work of man has just multiplied and improved both the production and the picking system of salt, until the up-to-date conformation

OToday the Saline of Margherita di Savoia are a rare example of integration between natural habitat and human activity. The environment is obviously conditioned from the salt production: the sea water is artificially purred from a water-scooping machine placed in the north zone (mouth Aloisa); thanks to slopes and depths, the water slowly comes down towards south, evaporates and gets cleaned, till arriving to the big salt frames (planned in the 18th century by Luigi Vanvitelli) where takes the appearance, in the warm summer days, of an extended bright blinding expanse of the purest salt, then it is collected and stored in white mountains, very evocative, that form the town natural background, developed where, till the half of the 19th century, there were the straw huts of the workers employed in the hard activity of salt extraction and living in unhealthy conditions due to the continuous sea-storms and the dump.

Drainages have been made through the years till rendering the small Isthmus town a modern bathing and thermal centre, very popular, and very crowded in the long summer season.