Salt pans and salt farming
The Piran Salt Pans were created in 804 and consisted of the Fazan Salt Pans in Lucija (today's Lucija marina), the smaller Strunjan Salt Pans and the larger Sečovlje Salt Pans.
The cultural heritage of the Piran Salt Pans reflects the centuries-old life and work of the salt workers of the Northeastern shores of the Adriatic Sea. Of the once numerous salt pans in the Gulf of Trieste, only those in Sečovlje and Strunjan have survived, which makes them all the more important. It places them at the level of ethnological, technical, historical, built and landscape heritage of exceptional importance.
The Sečovlje and Strunjan salt pans are the only salt pans still in operation in Slovenia and the only salt pans in this part of the Adriatic still producing salt and preserving the traditional artisanal production process.
Today, the economic role of the salt pans is intertwined with the nature conservation and cultural role: the salt produced is valued by users for its quality and mineral content; the preservation of salt-making practices supports awareness of cultural heritage; and the salt pans provide shelter for rare or special species of flora and fauna, while at the same time serving as a preserve for people of an ecologically noble living environment and a reminder of the once rich Mediterranean cultural heritage and a landscape that is disappearing.