The Museum of Salt

The Núcleo Museológico do Sal (Salt Museum Site)

The general concept of the salt museum site is based on the idea that the salt works and salt belong to an activity that integrates multiple aspects: historical, ethnographic, landscape, environmental and economic and should be explored in an integrated manner.

Currently, on the other hand, the salt museum and other meaningful elements in the salt works areas are instruments helping to recover this activity and sites, and not just mere deposits of instruments and materials pertaining to salt.

In the case of Figueira da Foz, the creation of a museum centre, in the middle of the salt works, is a remarkable added value, to which the existence of a warehouse and a pedestrian route lends significance. These allow the visitor to understand the integration of these three areas that complement and complete each other: the Corredor da Cobra salt works, the salt warehouse and the museum site.

With the opening of the Salt Museum Site, The Municipality of Figueira da Foz intends to globally allocate an open space, an area for experimentation and the production of knowledge, that will structure new identities that form part of it, out of the different forms of relationship between Man, Society, Culture and Nature.In this sense, and by supporting an overall information strategy sustained, from the onset, in the reactivation and continuous maintenance of the salt exploitation activity, the Municipality sought also to provide the conditions for this salt works to act also as a training area for new marnotos, as the interpretive centre and laboratory for different studies in the biodiversity of this ecosystem type, and as a didactic unit for recreation and for interactivity to be enjoyed by the various different interest groups who visit this unique and distinctive place.

Thus, the creation of a museum located in the middle of the salt works - and complemented by the existence of a salt warehouse, a pedestrian route through the salt works and a future River Route for the Mondego estuary - will allow the integrated enjoyment of different areas where one can explore the riches and complementarity of their contributions and meanings.