Anyone who has spent a day roaming around Gozo’s coastline has had the chance to stroll through Xwejni’s 3km long stretch of salt pans. They’ve been there for so long, it is easy to mistake them for a natural occurrence but these beauties have been dug out manually and date back to the mid-17th century.
It is said the salt pans in Xwejni, Marsalforn, are 350 years old, and if that figure is accurate to the year, it would mean that they were created around the year 1670. That’s all the way back to the Knights of Malta’s stay on the islands and almost a whole century before Queen Marie Antoinette of France was even born!
However, saltpans in Malta predate even the Knights and can be traced as far back as the Roman and Phoenician times. That’s approximately 2,500 years ago folks!
Salt pans are the Mediterranean’s ancient solution to acquiring salt. Filled with sea water during the wetter seasons, it is left to dry out as the temperature warms with the change of the season. At the end, the salt becomes the residue of this evaporation process, but it doesn’t stop there. Salt farmers, as they are known, must carefully separate the salt from the dirt accumulated to the underlying rocks, before they can collect and sell the product.
Salt pans are not just located in Gozo. Rather, they can be found scattered across most of the Maltese islands coastlines but their quantities vary.
One good example in Malta is Salina Bay within the limits of Bugibba. Ghadira Bay also has its fair share of salt pans, with the adjacent city being christened with the name Mellieha, a derivation from the Maltese word melh (meaning salt).
Seems like the new Instagram trend of the year if you ask me!