S. Marina Salina: The present-day village of Santa Marina largely lies on the site of that big Hellenistic-Roman settlement that lasted about a thousand years (from the 4th century B.C. to the 5th century A.D.) the end of which coincided with the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire and with the end of the medieval age (476 A.D.). Illustrious visitors to Salina (such as Houel in the 18th century and Orsi in the first part of the 20th century) testified la the present of ancient remains both at Santa Marina and at Lingua, a hamlet of Santa Marina.

Today at Santa Marina there is one of the two commercial harbours on the island, and this is also thanks to its particular position: the fact is that the south-eastern coastal strip has always been the part best suited to landing and for this reason the decision was taken to create a tourist harbour in that area. This project became reality and in summer Santa Marina is visited by the boats of important personages who prefer the reserve, quiet and courtesy of Salina to the vulgar fashionable ostentations of other places.

At the harbour you can visit the church of the patron saint, Santa Marina, whose feast is on 16 July. The church is very old, just as the cult of Santa Marina di Scanio is very old. This cult wa brought back to life by the settlers who came to Santa Marina and Lingua in the 12th and 13th centuries. While the inhabitants of Lingua had the same patron saint as Llipari, St Bartholomew (whose church dates from the 18th century) the inhabitants of Santa Marina placed themselves under the protection of this Saint who is not at all different from the numerous other saints with the same name, corresponding exactly to the saint of Bithynia, whose cult was brought to Italy by the Venetians. Probably an inland chapel was buiit earlier, but the church proper was built in 1622, and then enlarged in 1725.

In the past Santa Marina was well known for its merchant fleet, thanks to which it attained such economic security as to obtain complete emancipation of the island from the yoke of Lipari, but in its area there have always been people with a big predispositionfor trade;the proof is that its area was called precisely Salina in the period of colonisation in the 12th and 13th centuries, because of the big quantity of salt loded there. Actually, in very ancient time the name Salinae referred almost exclusively to the shore going from Santa Manrina to Lingua, over a sea that is as intense and penetrating as the azure that characterises it.

Lingua

Lingua is a sort of showpiece for Santa Marina, which rightly does everything to avoid it ever fading and to make sure it preserves its beauty. The village is characterised by a beautiful seafront always closed to traffic, and in it there have developed excellent restaurants that in many cases maintain the traditional Aeolian recipes (as also happens in the resturants at Santa Marina). In addition to the long beach, the true attraction of the village is the pool of brackish water from which salt was once extracted, starting from Roman times. Today this pool is a sort of shelter for migratory birds. Whith a bit of luck you can see beatiful exemplars of herons, storks, etc.