L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 12, 2026 www.italoamericano.org 10 L'Italo-Americano C ervia was built t w i c e , a n d t h e second time its inhabitants took quite a lot of the first city with them. It was 1 6 9 8 w h e n c o n s t r u c t i o n b e g a n o n t h e C e r v i a w e know today, and buildings in the old town were disman- tled inside the salt pans sev- eral miles away; bricks and other materials were loaded onto burchielle, the flat-bot- tomed boats normally used t o c a r r y s a l t , a n d t a k e n toward the coast to go into the walls of the new one: the people of Cervia had finally a c c e p t e d t h a t t h e p l a c e where their city had grown could no longer be the place where they lived. Cervia has always been linked with salt: salt pans are documented with cer- tainty from around the tenth century, and Cervia Vec- chia stood in their midst, surrounded by the shallow basins on which the town d e p e n d e d f o r w o r k a n d t r a d e . E c o n o m i c a l l y , t h e p o s i t i o n w a s p e r f e c t , b e c a u s e t h e p r o d u c t o n which the community lived was immediately outside its walls; unfortunately, howev- er, what was useful for salt was considerably less useful for human beings. The sali- na was a wetland, the sea had gradually moved farther away as sediment accumu- lated along the coast, and by t h e s e v e n t e e n t h c e n t u r y malaria and unhealthy con- ditions were taking such a toll that the population peri- odically declined. As early as 1630, there was talk of mov- i n g t h e c i t y s o m e w h e r e healthier. Sixty-seven years later, after repeated requests from the inhabitants, Pope Inno- cent XII signed the order authorizing the new city on November 9, 1697, and on January 24 of the following y e a r t h e f i r s t s t o n e o f Cervia Nuova was laid on higher, drier ground closer to the Adriatic. Moving the town, however, didn't mean the people of Cervia were about to give up their source of wealth, salt. The challenge was to put enough distance between the salina and the houses to make life healthier w h i l e k e e p i n g t h e w h o l e b u s i n e s s c l o s e e n o u g h t o work. I n f a c t , p a r t o f t h e s a l t economy had already begun m o v i n g t o w a r d t h e s e a before the townspeople did, with the great Magazzino d e l S a l e ( 1 6 9 1 ) a n d t h e Torre San Michele, built to guard the warehouses and the valuable product passing through them, both located by the canal; a second ware- h o u s e , t h e D a r s e n a , f o l - lowed in 1712. The salt col- lected in the pans could be loaded onto the burchielle, carried along the canal and stored there before distribu- tion, which made the coast a practical commercial center even while Cervia Vecchia remained inland. Basically, t h e n e w c i t y g r e w b e s i d e that machinery of trade. This peculiar origin histo- r y h e l p s e x p l a i n C e r v i a N u o v a ' s e q u a l l y p e c u l i a r u r b a n s h a p e . I t s h i s t o r i c c e n t e r w a s p l a n n e d a s a quadrilateral and looked, from the outside, almost like a fortified town, except that much of its outer wall was made from houses. These were the homes of the sali- nari, the workers employed in the salt pans, and their exterior walls had no doors opening directly beyond the town; access was controlled t h r o u g h t h e c i t y g a t e s , which were closed at night. Inside stood the Direzione Saline, where state officials supervised production, sales and the people employed in the works. MUSA, Cervia's M u s e o d e l S a l e , u s e s a particularly apt expression for the arrangement: a città fabbrica , a factory-city, because the town was not merely beside its principal industry; it had been orga- nized around it. T h e a r r a n g e m e n t a l s o tied a job to a house in a very literal way, as the sali- nari themselves helped con- struct the new Cervia and, in return, acquired the right to live free of charge in the houses provided for them, a p r i v i l e g e t h a t c o u l d p a s s from father to son and sur- vived until 1953. Work in the salina followed the sea- sons, but when the salt was ready, the worker did not go t h e r e a l o n e . B e f o r e t h e m o d e r n r e o r g a n i z a t i o n , there were 149 small salt pans, each associated with a family, and wives and chil- dren joined the collection w h e n e x t r a h a n d s w e r e n e e d e d . T h e n c a m e t h e r i m e s s a d e l s a l e , w h e r e every salt load was checked a n d t h e w o r k e r s ' p e r f o r - mance assessed for quantity and quality. Around seventy loaded boats could arrive during the annual opera- tion, which gives some idea of the scale of an industry that is easy to reduce, from a distance, to picturesque w h i t e h e a p s i n s h a l l o w water. This system lasted, with changes, until 1959, when the State Monopolies reor- ganized the saltworks, and t h e m a n y s m a l l f a m i l y - worked pans were combined i n t o m u c h l a r g e r a r e a s , m e c h a n i z e d m e t h o d s replaced much of the hand labor, and harvesting shift- ed to a single annual collec- tion. The burchielle stopped arriving at the warehouses i n t h e o l d n u m b e r s , t h e b u i l d i n g s g r a d u a l l y l o s t their original purpose, and men who had spent their lives working one small sec- tion of the salina suddenly found themselves inside a very different industry. One f o r m e r s a l i n a r o l a t e r described the adjustment rather neatly: at first, they felt like fish out of water. But one of the old pans escaped the transformation: Salina Camillone is the surviving fragment of the artisanal system, the last of the roughly 150 small salt- works that existed before the changes of the 1950s, and it is still worked with traditional tools and meth- ods. From June to Septem- ber, salt is collected there by hand, and the people doing it include members of the G r u p p o C u l t u r a l e Civiltà Salinara, which w a s f o r m e d b e c a u s e t h e k n o w l e d g e d i s a p p e a r i n g from everyday work was in danger of disappearing alto- g e t h e r . C a m i l l o n e s a l t became a Slow Food Pre- s i d i u m i n 2 0 0 4 . T h e same group helped create MUSA inside the old Mag- azzino del Sale Torre, collecting photographs, doc- uments, wooden tools and one of the burchielle that o n c e m a d e t h e j o u r n e y between the pans and the warehouses. From there, it is possible to go back out toward the salina and even- t u a l l y r e a c h t h e s i t e o f Cervia Vecchia itself, where v e r y l i t t l e o f t h e t o w n remains: the former seven- t e e n t h - c e n t u r y c h u r c h o f t h e M a d o n n a d e l l a N e v e , now a private residence, is the only surviving building associated with it. The rest went into the new Cervia, or disappeared after its people did. Which leaves Cervia with a rather unusual relation- ship to its own past. The city e s c a p e d t h e s a l t p a n s because living among them had become dangerous, but it did not escape the salt, nor did it particularly want t o . S o m e o f t h e b r i c k s moved, and so did the work- ers, whose houses, offices a n d w a r e h o u s e s w e r e rebuilt around a different patch of ground. Three cen- turies later, however, out at Camillone, someone is still going into the shallow water with the old wooden tools and collecting the same salt that caused the city to be built where it was, and then caused it to move. Cervia: a city built around salt GIULIA FRANCESCHINI Cervia's salt warehouses grew near the canal that linked the pans to the new town; inset: salt workers remained at the heart of an economy that influenced the city for centuries (Original image created for L'Italo-Americano with the assistance of AI) (Photo: Dreamstime) ALL AROUND ITALY TRAVEL TIPS DESTINATIONS ACTIVITIES

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