Cagliari, City of Salt

The vast and interesting complex is located in an area between the Molentargius pond and the Poetto beach, used for the collection of salt already by the Punics and Romans and then ceded in the eleventh century to the Victorian monks.
The mining activity, continued over the centuries with the “corvées” of the inhabitants of neighboring countries and the labor of the forced, was interrupted in 1985 due to the pollution of the area called Bellarosa Minore.
The current arrangement dates back mainly to the years around 1930 on the initiative of the State Monopoly with a design intervention due in large part to the director of the Saline, engineer Vincenzo Marchi, who designed both the workplaces and the residences for the employees.
The first building is the small church of the Sacred Name of Mary (1934), in neo-medieval forms, followed by the building once owned by the management, with neogothic references especially in the openings. Subsequently, near the electric cabin, in red bricks like all other buildings, a tree-lined avenue opens up, with a double row of “Ficus retusa”, which leads to the residential area in an internal square where the buildings with Liberty decorative motifs stand.
On the left, you can see the workshop of the locomotives already used to transport salt, and, after the bridge, the old headquarters of the Dopolavoro dei Salinieri (1932), transformed into the Teatro delle Saline in 1991. The theater room, consisting of an audience and balcony protected by a cast iron railing, is adorned with classical subjects, repeated in the walls and in the coffered ceiling, which frame a large central ovate. The after-work rooms have become the theater's service environments and also house a Entertainment Library available to the public.
Continuing along the Via della Palma canal, on the d. you can see the subsidiary salt processing plants and the building of the chosen salts, headquarters of the Molentargius-Saline Regional Natural Park Consortium, intended to manage the vast wetland, and the abandoned buildings used to process bromine and potassium salts, now examples of industrial archeology.
In 1977, the surrounding wetland was included among the sites recognized by the Ramsar Convention as an ideal habitat for avifauna.

History of studies
A review of the studies can be found in the bibliography relating to the sheet in the volume of “History of Art in Sardinia” on nineteenth-century architecture (2001).

Bibliography
S. Pira-F. Masala-P. Tarantini-M. Del Piano, The City of Salt, Cagliari, Stef, 1994, pp. 25-36;
G. Loddo, Cagliari. Architectures from 1900 to 1945, Cagliari, Coedisar, 1999, pp. 109-110;
F. Masala, Architecture from the Unification of Italy at the end of the 20th century. Nuoro, Ilisso, 2001, sheet 43

How to get there
The salt pans can be reached from the road system close to the Poetto waterfront, in the east of the city.

Tag

Structure category: Monument or Monumental Complex

Content type: Sites or plants
Environmental site

Usability: Open

Province: Cagliari

Common: Cagliari

Macro Territorial Area: South Sardinia

POSTAL CODE: 09126

Address: viale la Palma, s.n.c.

Telephone: +39 070 671003 +39 070 37919216 +39 070 341322

E-mail: info@apmolentargius.it documentazione@apmolentargius.it info@teatrodellesaline.it

Website: www.parcomolentargius.it/index.php www.teatrodellesaline.it www.apmolentargius.it

Facebook: www.facebook.com/parcomolentargius

Twitter: twitter.com/Molentargius

January - December

Wednesday - Thursday - Friday

9:00 AM - 1:00 PM

Tuesday - Thursday

4:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Information on tickets and access: For services to citizens, it is necessary to refer to the “Molentargius-Saline Regional Natural Park” body www.apmolentargius.it/contacts, for the Teatro delle Saline you should refer to Akròama - Teatro Stabile d'Arte Contemporanea www.teatrodellesaline.it/contacts

Services information: For face-to-face educational workshops and for online teaching, a reservation is necessary, to be made by contacting the Molentargius Park Association by telephone or email.

Other services: In the Teatro delle Saline there is and can be consulted the “Theme Library of Entertainment”.

Update

4/4/2024 - 09:49

Services

Teaching room