MOO Olive Tree and Oil Museum Torgiano

Created in 200 as a companion collection to the Wine Museum, the MOO Olive and Oil Museum is located in a small nucleus of medieval houses within the town walls.

Located in the rooms that once were the home of an oil mill, the museum exhibits findings and artworks telling the history of the olive tree, ancient plant, symbol of the Mediterranean culture, and the symbolic, propitiatory, apotropaic and curative values of the plant and the product of its fruit.

Ethnographic sets for the cultivation of the olive trees and the olive processing, archeological evidences and art collections propose an unusual itinerary in ten rooms. The first sections are strictly technical, dedicated to the botanic characteristics of olive trees and techniques for cultivating and extracting the oil, together with a rich documentation regarding the history and evolution of olive oil equipment; after those a thematic setting showing the various usage of olives and oil. From the mythological origin of the oil, to its use as a source of light, in the rituals of the great monotheistic western religions, as well as in medicine, in nutrition, in sports, in cosmetics, for handicrafts purposes and popular tradition.

Among the activities the ten years old exhibition “OLIO E LUCE” (OIL AND LIGHT); to this numerous contemporary artists have given their contribution, among the Bruno Ceccobelli, Nino Caruso, Aldo Rontini, Riccardo Biavati, giving their personal version on the theme of the oil lamp.