Antica via del sale

With the expression “via del sale”(Way of Salt) we mean the old streets, and the mule tracks, that in the past sloped through the Ligurian Alps, from the Po valley and the Piedmont hills to the Ligurian shore. The names of those important ways of comunication and trade are linked to salt, which was extremely important in the past; in fact this element was essential for people’s diet and for food conservation. Salt was hard to find in the northen regions, and it was the only way people had to store, conserve and mantain different kinds of food in an edible state, that otherwise would have perished. For this reason, from the Middle Age until the fifteenth century the network of routes from the plains to the sea became very numerous and significant. There was not just one “Way of salt”, because all the people coming from different regions of the “High lands” travelled across various area to reach the sea and to obtain many basic products necessary for their own goods. The historic “Way of salt”, from Provence, particularly from Nice and Ventimiglia, to the Piedmont region, across the Tenda way, from the Roja and Nervia valleys, made possible the transfer of products coming from the extreme west of Liguria as well as saline entracted goods. The importance of Tenda hill as a historic junction was often confirmed; for example Cluverio (1580-1622) that established the hill as the beginning of the Maritime Alps in Italy Antiqua, or the seventeenth-century choreographer Castaldi who mentioned it as  “Mons Cornius” in his description of Liguria. For him, the hill was the Gate or door to commerce and travel between west Liguria and  Piedmont. He wrote that the community was very rich because Tenda “is exactly the point where people have to pass through  to reach the ways of salt which lead to Piedmont, and the mountain pass is always open ,even when it snows, for the carriage of goods”. According to Castaldi, Tenda was the way to access to Piedmont; Cuni (Cuneo), Bria (Briga), Saorgio (Savorgio), Breil (Breglio-Bregli-Blegli) were the passage from the sea to Po Valley; thus the villagge of Pigna was a strategic and commercial point due to its position along the way from the Nervia valley to the Tenda Gate.

Our "Old Way of salt” comes from this ancient history so we can once again experience remote period. That was the time of adventurous journeys through alpine passes on foot only with the help of tireless mule to transport goods, labours that today would be unthinkable. This is precisely what our “Way of salt”is: the rediscovery of an ancient tradition we can experience again with today's means of trasportation.