Pannonian Salt Lakes and Archaeological Park

The Pannonian Salt Lakes complex was created as part of the regeneration of Tuzla’s central area, which had been affected for decades by ground subsidence linked to the long pumping of brine from beneath the city. Rather than abandon the affected ground, the city turned the renewed relationship with its salt water into a public landscape: three artificial lakes filled with salt water, promenades and salt waterfalls. The complex is modern and engineered, and it should be read as a recreational regeneration project, not as a natural lake system. Within the complex, the reconstructed Neolithic pile-dwelling archaeological park presents a reconstruction of the early settlement evidence associated with the wider Tuzla area. It is an interpretive reconstruction — a built presentation of archaeological evidence — and the distinction between the modern recreational lakes and the reconstructed archaeological interpretation should be kept clear: one is a contemporary public landscape, the other is a built representation of prehistoric settlement.