Skip to main content

Featured

The Queen's Hamlet

The Queen’s Hamlet is a charming attraction in the park of the Palace of Versailles, built for Marie Antoinette in the 18th century. It consists of a group of rustic cottages and farm buildings, arranged around an artificial lake, that served as a place of leisure and education for the queen and her children. The hamlet was inspired by the naturalistic movement in art and architecture, and by the model farms that were popular among the French aristocracy at the time. The hamlet was also a way for Marie Antoinette to escape the formalities and pressures of the court life, and to enjoy a simpler and more intimate lifestyle. The hamlet was designed by Richard Mique and Hubert Robert, who also modified the landscape of the Petit Trianon, where the hamlet is located. The hamlet has three distinct areas: the reception area, where the queen entertained her guests in the boudoir, the billiard room, and the Queen’s House; the farm area, where the animals and crops were raised and the dair
Post a Comment
Read more
Labels

Ancient Salt Ponds


Fed by a small local stream, the field of angular, interlocking earthen evaporation pools near the small Peruvian town of Maras has been providing local inhabitants with salt and visitors with a stunning view for generations. 

Cascading down a hillside valley like uneven steps, the Salinas de Maras (as they are known in the local tongue) were first created sometime in the 1400s by the Incas. While there is no transcribed record of the ponds’ creation, they seem to have been passed down and expanded by a small number of owners over hundreds of years. 

Salt is harvested from the patchwork of shallow pools via a process of evaporation. A natural spring feeds a salt-rich stream that flows down into the pools, which are then opened and dammed individually as needed. Once one of the pools is filled, the water is allowed to evaporate, and then the salt crystals are scraped off the ground with simple instruments. Then the whole process begins again.

The area is not widely industrialized, and the salt is still just bagged up, packaged, and sold at the market. Today there are about 3,000 pools that are still harvested by the community of local families who control the salt pans, the transport roads to the valley, and generally the entire salt production from the site, which remains much the same as it was when the Inca discovered it over 1,000 years ago.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts