MOO – Olive and Olive Oil Museum

Created by Maria Grazia Marchetti Lungarotti at the wish of Giorgio, the MOO Museum of Olive and Oil confirms a continuity of intent with MUVIT. The museum is located in a small cluster of medieval houses within the castle walls and is managed by the Lungarotti Foundation.

The museum itinerary develops along eleven rooms and opens with information written by the C.N.R. (National Research Council) on the botanical characteristics of the olive tree, on the most widespread cultivars in Umbria, on the traditional and most innovative techniques of cultivation and oil extraction, together with maps on the historical diffusion of olive growing (see the path section). The following rooms are set in the premises that were formerly home to an olive press, active until a few decades ago; they host a rich documentation relating to the history and evolution of olive oil machines: from the first stone mortars of the 5th millennium B.C. to the introduction of the trapetum (the tub of Greek origin, used by the Romans, with two hemispherical rotating wheels), up to the reference to the most modern systems and to the invention of the “continuous cycle” system that marked the start for the modern olive oil extraction system. The path continues on the two upper floors, where the presence of oil and olive trees in daily life, the uses and values attributed to them over time are documented in sections: the mythological origin of the plant, the importance of olive growing, from the Roman economy to the medieval revival up to recent centuries, oil as a source of lighting, in Mediterranean monotheistic religions, in medicine and nutrition, in sports, in cosmetics, as a source of heating and as a significant element of popular lore that attributed  – and partially still does –  symbolic, propitiatory, apotropaic and curative values to the plant and the product derived from its fruit.

The Museum is directed by the art historian and archivist Maria Grazia Marchetti Lungarotti.