Concise story of the salt gardens

At the geological time, the basin of Guérande was a bay. The progressive receding of the sea has made room to a land liable to flooding.

More than 2000 years ago

The Gauls made sea salt by the evaporation of the sea water warmed in clay jars.

At the Gallo-Roman period

After the Gaul conquest and the victory upon the Venetes (56 BC), the Romans set the first salt gardens taking the salt salines of Venice as a model.

During the XIV and XV centuries.

At the middle age, the sea tried to flood this territory again, but men had already modelled the landscape to extract this "White Gold".

The Dukes of Brittany made many marshy lands cleared (called "boles"in French) to set up new salines there.

In 1489, Anne de Bretagne "ennobled the salines exempting them from taxes". The salt tax did not exist in Brittany where the salt of Guérande freely circulated. That was the time of "the salt swapping", the salt growers transported the salt to Brittany and brought back cereals to the Guerande peninsula. The salt tax was alternately suppressed and restored and in 1945 it was abolished for good.

Nowadays .

The salines, gigantic mosaic of basins chiselled by men, still retain and control the water of the tides.