The Salt Museum
- SALINS-LES-BAINS - JURA -
Welcome to the Grande Saline of Salins-les-Bains.
The guided visit lasts about one hour. Afterwards you can continue to visit the Salt Museum at your leisure.
During your visit you are taken, via a fifty-step stairway, into a subterranean gallery where the ambient temperature is 12°
C (or 54° F). It takes 30 minutes to go through the gallery. The ground is uneven so we advise you to be careful.
The hall where you meet at the beginning of the visit gives a good introduction to the Salt Museum.
1.IN THE MEETING HALL
S
alt was produced in these saltworks for nearly 1200 years. Priceless at one time, this
product indispensable to human life made Salins one of the most important towns in Franche-Comté during the Middle Ages.
Recognized today, alongside the Royal Saltworks of
Arc-et-Senans, as a part of the heritage of all humanity, the
saltworks of Salins-les-Bains constitute a unique testimony to
“ignigenous” production of salt, better known as “fire-source”
production, that is to say “produced by means of a source of heat”.
The value of salt
V
ery early, salt held an essential place in the life of men, which resulted in it
being called “white gold”. This product was essential, especially for food
conservation, and long possessed an economic value comparable to that of oil
today. Rare and difficult to produce, it gave birth to the word “salary” which for
the Romans constituted a soldier’s pay. During the the Middle Ages it was subjected to a tax known as the “gabelle”. Today salt is present everywhere in
diverse forms. No longer rare or indispensable for food conservation, it is no longer known as “white gold” but as an intensifier of taste.
The formation of salt
N
umerous factors explain the presence in the region of salty water or « brine »
beneath the surface of the earth. 210 million years ago, a shallow but very
salty sea covered the area of Salins. Little by little the sea evaporated leaving a thick
layer of salt that today lies 250 metres below the surface. When in contact with this
mineral vein called “rock salt”, underground water absorbs the salt. During the
Neolithic period salt water springs encouraged previously nomadic peoples to settle
nearby. Since then, there has been no end to the rivalry of ingenuity in the exploitation of this brine.
There are three techniques for the production of salt: 1) mining, 2) salt marsh evaporation, and 3) “fire-source” production in which a source of heat is used to boil the
brine. In Franche-Comté this latter technique was used for 1200 years. The salt is produced through the reduction of salty water by evaporation.
Rock salt
1.IN THE MEETING HALL (CONTINUED)
The model
T
ake a moment to look at the model situated in the centre
of the meeting hall.
This model shows how, down through the centuries, salt has
been produced from brine. The upper part of the model shows
the evaporation of the brine, the storing of the salt and its
conditioning in the form of salt blocks, whereas the lower part
shows the underground galleries where the brine was collected and the installations used to bring it to the surface.
You can see that several pumping systems succeeded and
completed each other in the saltworks:
The balancing pole (in the
centre of the model) was the
first to be used. At one end of
the pole there is a bucket
and at the other
end a counterweight.
This system
was operated by
workers.
The
springs were tapped at ground level
to collect a water
containing around 40
grammes of salt per litre.
Later a system consisting of a chain with buckets attached to
it, called a “noria”, (seen on the right side of the model) and
that was powered by horses was adopted in the 14th century.
It brought up a water that held more than 80 grammes of salt
per litre.
Hand-operated piston pumps came into use during the
18th century.
In 1750 a water wheel powered from the nearby river La
Furieuse was installed. It is still in operation today, running the
brine pump installed in the 19th century, drawing from a depth
of 246 metres a water containing 330 grammes of salt per litre.
Additional
Information
“The Town of Salins in 1628”.
A
t the far end of the hall you see a painting by Nicolas
Richard, "The Town of Salins in 1628".
This painting is of precious help in understanding the town of
Salins in the 17th century. Several items show the importance
of the former saltworks. While the roofs of the town are made
of wooden shingles, the saltworks buildings stand out because
of their tile roofs, a sign of great wealth. One understands
what power the industrial site held over the town : the
“Grande” saltworks covered nearly 2 hectares. At its
height the site employed 180 people inside the
compound, and around 640
outside, especially in the surrounding forests. To protect the
salt, highly esteemed
because it was so
rare, two fortresses
overlooked the
valley.
In the Middle Ages there were three different saltworks in Salins, including the “Grande Salines”, the
largest, the one where the Salt Museum is now found. It wasn’t until the 18th century that all three
sites were to come under a single administration.
If your guide has arrived,we ask you now to follow the group and go to station 2.
2.THE UNDERGROUND GALLERIES AND THEIR INSTALLATIONS
The salt water springs were
tapped via two different wells,
known as the upper well and
the lower well. In the 13th
century a one-hundred and
thirty metre-long barrel-vault
gallery was built to join the two
wells. Altogether 165 metres in
length,the gallery has been largely altered over the centuries,thus the current
underground passages,for the most part,
date from after the 17th century.
Underground galleries
The upper well
The lower well
T
The lower well
T
his is where the springs came forth. The salt waters
were directed into a collecting basin, while the others
were channeled into a canal called the “Cicon” to then
flow into “La Furieuse”.
Openings situated at the highest point of the vault are
likely where the buckets of the noria came through in order
to draw the brine. The horses that powered the noria were
to be found in a surface building called the “wheelhouse”.
In the 19th century a new drilling technique appeared
which made it possible to draw the brine directly from the
rock salt vein. Exploitation of the springs ceased and the
lower well area was then used to dump the ash from the
evaporation building. This fill explains why today the
ground level here is so uneven and several metres higher
than originally.
We ask you now to go on Station 3 to continue your visit.
wenty-one kilometres from Salins lies another important site
in the story of salt : the Saltworks of Arc-et-Senans. Built in
1774 by Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, this royal factory was founded
to respond to the rise in the need for salt.The saltworks of Salins,
in the 18th century, proved to be difficult to modernize, cramped
within the walls and confines of its narrow valley. Besides, the
salinity of its brine was declining whereas the costs of transporting wood were rising. It thus seemed much easier to transport
the brine to the Forest of Chaux rather than to carry wood all the
way to Salins. Between the villages of Arc and Senans a new
production site saw the light of day, supplied with brine from
Salins by means of a wooden
salt water aqueduct 21 kilometers long. The site was to
close a century later, never
having achieved the hoped for
results. Today it represents a
type of industrial utopian
architecture, emblematic of the
century of the Enlightenment.
3.THE UPPER WELL
T
he upper well is the
oldest of the sites
where underground brine
was drawn. The water
wheel installed in 1750 is
still in service, with the
balancing system which
connects it to a piston pump dating to the 19th century. This well,
drilled in 1948, reaches a depth of 246 metres. It is the most
recent technical installation of these saltworks. Water from the
river is brought in to turn the wheel. The waterwheel in turn
powers the balancing pole which thus actions the pump. The
brine, formerly sent into the vats and heated to produce salt, is
today stored in large cisterns underneath the present-day museum
and used for snow removal by the Town of Salins.
The town’s thermal baths, however, are supplied with salt
water from another spring known as the Muyre Spring (the
former Petite Saline). There is also the well known as
the “Puits des Cordeliers”. The thermal baths, highly
reputed for rheumatism treatment, today offer a
range of services for relaxation and well-being.
We ask you now to follow the group towards the evaporation building,Station 4 and the vats.
4.THE VATS
T
he "vat" is where the brine was heated for evaporation.
The installations that can be currently seen have been
adapted to heating with coal, used in Salins as of 1820. The
"boilers" fed the hearths that are situated on the ground floor.
Placed at one end of the vat, their smoke circulated underneath, as in the system of Roman baths, before escaping via
the tall chimneys.
Until the end of the 18th century, round caldrons were used,
suspended directly above the heat source. The vats found in
the saltworks today are rectangular and hung from iron pins
placed in walls of refractory brick. A vat holds 38,000 litres
and measures 17 m. by 4 m. 20 and is made of plates of riveted metal. They
had to be regularly repaired due
to corrosion. The
presence of two
employees,
above and below
the vat, was
necessary for this
operation.
The job of the saltworkers
T
he difficulty of the work was due to the high temperature
and humidity, but also to the archaic site and installations.
In addition, salt prevents wounds from healing. At the vats,
once the evaporation is finished, the salt was removed and
placed onto the vat’s wooden cover to drain. It was then taken
to the salt store by means of small dump carts or wheel barrows, to be put into sacs and sold.
Numerous factors explain the end of the industrial activity of
the saltworks. The transportation of coal, imported from the
department of the Saône-et-Loire some 200 kilometres distant, was very expensive. In addition, in the middle of the 19th
century, the end of the state monopoly and the arrival of the
railroad contributed to the development of the Mediterranean
salt marshes, which would hasten the decline of the FrancheComté saltworks. Also, more performant installations for this
enclaved site would have simply cost too much. And besides,
with the development of other means of food conservation,
the use of salt was in decline. Thus the saltworks ceased their
activity in 1962, with only 12 workers and 20% of the earlier
buildings. Today, this unique touristic site and its heritage
include one of the last salt vats in the world.
Now please approach the window overlooking the car park and have a look at Station 5,the outside space of the "Grande Saline"
5.OUTSIDE THE BUILDINGS
V
ery few of the buildings today still testify to the industrial activity of the saltworks,
80% of them having disappeared in 1940. The current Tourist Office was originally
the gatekeeper’s home and later served as lodging for workers. The compound’s sole
gate is still to be seen. The evaporation building shelters the boilers with which the
brine was heated.The salt workshop, which extends from the evaporation building, was
used for the storing and conditioning of the salt. The sale of the salt was organized
within a radius of 200 kilometers of Salins, including in Switzerland. The building to the
left was originally the wheelhouse for the Upper Well before it became the director’s
home. The current car park was an important place of traffic and also where coal was
stored and ashes were dumped.
Please follow along now towards Station 6.
6.THE SALT MUSEUM
T
he end of the guided visit finds you at the entrance to the
museum proper which you can visit at your own pace.
Here you can watch a film containing images from the 1920s
and which explains how salt was first produced in FrancheComté.
The way out is through the museum’s permanent exposition,
which is translated into English and German. An area reserved for young visitors concludes the visit of the museum.
We hope that you enjoy the Salt Museum and that you have
a pleasant stay in Franche-Comté.
Grande Saline de Salins les Bains
Place des Salines - 39 110 Salins-les-Bains
Tél. 03 84 73 01 34 - www.salinesdesalins.com
Musées des techniques et cultures comtoises
Rue des Prémoureaux – 39 110 Salins-les-Bains
Tél. 03 84 73 22 04 - www.musees-des-techniques.org
Photographic credits : Page 1 : ©MTCC/Cl. Bévalot Phox, Y. Goux, O. Leblanc, M. Paygnard, J. Varlet, P. Minella.
Page 2 : ©Archives départementales du Jura, cote : 11 Qp 350/Cl. Service photographique ADJ. ©Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon, cote : coll. Chifflet, 44, f° 71. ©Inventaire du patrimoine, Région Franche-Comté/ADAGP - 1980/Cl.
Y. Sancey. ©Médiathèque de Dole, Ms. Dorval 331 bis.
Page 3 : ©MTCC/Cl. Bévalot Phox, G. Nivoix, M. Paygnard.
©Photothèque EPCC Saline royale/Cl J.-F. Bidoli.
Page 4 : ©All rights reserved/Cl. MTCC. ©MTCC.
Editorial
Committee : Grande Saline : F. Monnot, V. Ruffinoni, A. Tavernier. Musées des techniques et cultures comtoises : H.
Gucciardi, E. Morfin, C. Roveda. Centre de Linguistique Appliquée de Besançon : J. Olsen.
www.artplatz.fr - 2010
FURTHER INFORMATION