Saline-les-Bains blows your mind, because it shows you an aspect of medieval history that you probably had no idea about. Or at least, that I had no idea before I visited it. Over a thousand years ago people discovered that the water flowing up from underground springs was salty. So even as far back as 1115 they created “saltworks” to collect the water, dry it, to obtain salt. One interesting learning for me was: salt was not required for human health or flavoring, but rather this was the only known method of storing fresh foods (such as meat and fish) over the winter. A family living in Middle Age Europe required around 25 kg of salt per year!
