Salt Pans - Salini tal-Melħ
Salt is one of the ancient commodities such that it brought prosperity to places where it was available. It was deemed to be so important that Roman legionaries were given part of their wages in salt, resulting in a word we still use to this day: salārium or salary. The origins of salt production around the Maltese Islands are unknown, which leads one to assume that the production of this primary good from a renewable source has been established from well before the formalisation of its production by the Knights. The name of the locality of Mellieħa comes from the salt pans originally extant in the vicinity of Għadira which are denoted as saline vecchie (old salt pans) in maps produced during the time of the Knights in Malta. Gian Franġisk Abela refer to them as primitive pans in his 1647 publication and from the description it appears they were located more or less where the bird sanctuary is today. One of the fresco paintings of the Great siege by Perez d'Aleccio in the Grandma...