Heritage
Pedra de Lume: Visitor and Heritage Guide
Salt pans worked inside an extinct volcano, fed by channels from the sea, on an island whose name is simply the Portuguese for salt.
- Country Cape Verde
- Category Heritage
- Reviewed 20 August 2026
- Sources 2
- Length 1 min read
Credit Daniel Åhs Karlsson, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
The Salines de Pedra de Lume are on Cape Verde's Tentative List, submitted in 2016. They are not inscribed. What follows is the country's own account.
The pans cover about forty hectares in the northeast of Sal.
Visiting
- The site is in the northeast of Sal, reached by road from Espargos or Santa Maria.
- The pans are inside the crater, so the approach is over the rim.
- The works buildings and the old cable-car headframe are part of what survives.
- The ground is salt crust and volcanic rock. Neither is kind to bare feet or thin soles.
- Bring water and sun protection. There is no shade in a crater.
Sources
The area, the elevation, the distance to the bay, the natural channels and the fifty million tonne estimate are from Cape Verde's Tentative List submission for the Salines de Pedra de Lume, entry 6106, submitted in 2016. It is written in French and is paraphrased here. Read on 20 August 2026.