Just a few meters from Tórre Piètra lies one of the largest salt flats in the entire Mediterranean basin: 4,000 hectares along a 20-kilometer stretch of coastline.

This place is a window into Italy's history. On one hand, it is striking for the amount of effort and human intervention to control the environment; on the other hand, by contrast, it's remarkable for its substantial continuity: the production process has remained almost the same over millennia - a series of canals and basins in which seawater is moved further into the salt flat.

You should picture a very basic facility, with low productivity, with buildings constructed from mud, reeds, and straw.

In the 1500s, the salt flats were organized into four distinct areas, each with reservoirs where water entered in the spring. In August, the salt was broken up with a hoe and then transported to the heaps. From there, horsemen carried it to the beach, where small boats distributed it to sailing vessels, suitably anchored offshore because the seabed was shallow.

This system was profoundly changed in 1754 thanks to the reform by Liìgi Vanvitelli, the architect who was simultaneously overseeing the construction of the Royal Palace of Caserta. Among the many innovations introduced by Vanviteli, the crucial one involved replacing the "sciorni" - old manual devices for water drainage - with Archimedes' screw. This new system allowed for much simpler and more efficient liquid lifting.

The intervention of the great architect, when viewed with contemporary sensibilities, has several merits: while the reclamation of other marshy lands has led to the disappearance of important wetland areas for the lives of many animals and plants, Vanvitèlli's project created an ecosystem that has effectively generated an environment of incredible naturalistic value.