Eastern Slovakia: Solivar - Unique Technical Monument I.

This national historic landmark, one of the most important technical monuments in Slovakia can be found relatively easily. Southeastern part of the East County city of Prešov is still called Solivar. As a good reference point you can serve and torso of the tower of the former salt warehouse, which was one of the most impressive architectural objects Solivar whole area. On 18 May 1986 but burned down warehouse building. The fire had destroyed the unique and inimitable bolted wooden truss structure.

The jump to history

Already in the Middle Ages from salty springs, springing at the foot hills near Slanské peaks near Prešov, harvested salt. Written mention of mining salt around Prešov dates back to the 13th century. Prešov salt is not used only for salting foods, also found its use in the glass, dyeing and the manufacture of soap or paper. Leopold began to dig a pit in 1571 and a year later there began underground mining. That ended abruptly downward groundwater flooding during the night of 21 to 22 February in 1752. Mine turned into a sort of underground salt lake full of brine.

Brine is a saturated salt solution in water, which contains in one litre of 15 to 300 g of various salts, but for most of us known as the kitchen salt. The method of extraction and processing of natural brine evaporation was known in medieval times. Particularly interesting is the fact that the time to confirm that the brine can be extracted to cook larger quantities and also a better salt than that of the stone, which are many years laboriously dug out from underground. The extraction of salt, therefore, started using a new technology that has been pumping salt water in leather bags by a pump driven by horses or oxen, which is called "gágel". One such bag to brine extraction had content of 5 to 7 hectolitres.

If you are interested to know more about salt and its journey to the stores, read next part when we will visit the unique museum.

Text and photo: O. Maňáková