Museo dell'olio della Sabina

The Museum is dedicated to the Sabine olive oil that the 2nd century A.D. physician Galen described as the best in the ancient world. The nearby Abbey of Farfa was one of the European mediaeval centres in which the antique techniques of olive growing were preserved and transmitted. The Museum is housed in Palazzo Perelli, a 16th century building that has been extensively altered and recently restored, but it also extends to the historical town centre and the landscape. The itinerary starts with a section dedicated to the myth of oil, celebrated with sculptures by contemporary masters Alik Cavaliere, Gianandrea Gazzola, Maria Lai and Hidetoschi Nagasawa. The tour continues with documentation on the botany of the Sabine olive tree and the olive-growing tradition, and the room of memory, where the world of oil is narrated through the voices and images of the farmers of Castelnuovo. A pedestrian path in the countryside leads to the late-mediaeval site of San Donato where, near the renovated church, the “Giardino degli ulivi del mondo” (The Garden of olive trees of the world) hosts the different species cultivated in the Mediterranean basin and symbolically through them the peoples that share the olive oil culture, both past and present.