Western Sicily’s Salt Pans

The salt pans of Nubia, near Trapani along Sicily’s west coast are renowned by cooks throughout the world for the delicious sea salt Sicilians have harvested from here for centuries. The tuna fishing industry, which has existed here since Phoenician times (c. 800 BCE), prompted the development of the salt pans because salt is an…

Inhale the Sunset 

The Maria Stella windmill on the Trapani salt flats stands as a proud beauty, with the sun setting on her face. Over the past few days, I’ve been working on an itinerary for July 2017 for an independent client, and one evening, the plan is to dine right on the salt flats as the sun…

Salt in the Wind(mill) 

This is the Maria Stella windmill on the Trapani salt flats. It is one of many windmills along Sicily’s west coast whose movement, generated by the force of the wind, powered a mechanism known as an Archimedean spiral (aka, screw conveyors or auger), that moved seawater from one salt flat to another in order to…