For centuries, salt-pans exerted great influence on the economy of the countries and tiny city-states in the Northern Adriatic. They were the subject of political disputes and wars, for owing to its applicability, salt was a precious raw material and a strategic merchant commodity, important for the conservation of food and production of gunpowder. Once upon a time, there were numerous large and small salt-pans in the Gulf of Trieste and Istria (e.g. at Milje/Muggia, Koper, Izola, Lucija), but up to the present day only those at Sečovlje and Strunjan have been preserved, marked not only by various political and economic interests, but also by the whimsicality of nature, which at times completely incapacitated salt-making for longer periods of time on the one hand and bestowed profusion upon it on the other.
