Museo dell'Olivo e dell'Olio

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Museo dell'Olivo e dell'Olio

The Museo dell'Olivo e dell'Olio (Olive Tree and Olive Oil Museum) is a privately run, themed museum in Torgiano ( Umbria , Italy), located in a building that was an oil mill until the 1960s . His collections of objects from the fields of applied art and everyday culture document the cultivation and oil extraction techniques, and show what use people made of the olive tree and its oil, what customs and symbolic meanings arose in this context.

history

The Museo dell'Olivo e dell'Olio was opened in 2000 on the initiative and under the direction of the Lungarotti Foundation. Together with the Museo del Vino in Torgiano, the foundation's wine museum, it belongs to the Sistema Museale dell'Umbria, the Umbrian museum administration.

The museum collections

Drawings depicting the different varieties of olive trees native to Umbria introduce the area, which introduces the botanical characteristics of the plant, traditional and modern cultivation techniques. A millstone powered by animals and a grinding system powered by water power show, in addition to photo documentation and text panels, the development of oil extraction techniques. Then the mythological aspects are dealt with. An Attic red-figure alabastron, which is attributed to the Foundry Painter (5th century BC), shows Athena , the goddess who, according to legend, gave the olive tree to humans as a gift. Other exhibits show that the goddess - as the guardian of technical knowledge - was active in women's domestic work, in agriculture, in shipbuilding and in war technology. In the room on the theme of landscape, land maps and maps are exhibited as well as objects that are reminiscent of the Grand Tour , a testament to the fascination that the olive groves, which are often found in Umbria, exerted on travelers who expressed their interest in the landscape in their diaries in words or sketches expressed. The following rooms deal with the traditional uses of olive oil. The oldest as a light source is documented in the form of an oil lamp collection with specimens from the pre-classical to neoclassical times. The ritual use of olive tree and olive oil in the Jewish, Christian and Muslim faith, the role of the plant and its fruit in nutrition, in sport, in the preparation of anointing and scented oils, in sealing, in weaving, cabinet making and others Areas of activity are the focus of the other halls. The subject area of ​​the symbolic meanings inherited from antiquity, which assign sacred meaning and magical-therapeutic effects to the olive tree and its oil, is the focus of the last room.

literature

  • Maria Grazia Marchetti Lungarotti, Olive and Oil Museum. Itinerary , Fondazione Lungarotti, Perugia, 2002
  • John Train, The Olive. Tree of civilization , Scala Books in associations with Antique Collectors' Club, 2004

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Concetta Masseria L'Aristeia del Banausos: l'athlon di uno scudo per Atena , Loffredo Editore, Naples 2001

Coordinates: 43 ° 1 ′ 30.86 ″  N , 12 ° 26 ′ 3.5 ″  E