The Olive Tree Museum in Imperia: a 6000-years-old connection with olive oil

The Olive Tree Museum in Imperia is the symbol of an area, Western Liguria, where olive trees are plentiful and have thrived for centuries; an area whose history and development has been closely shaped by olive tree cultivation and olive oil production.

Olive trees here grow even in the most inaccessible patches of earth, thanks to the narrow terraced strips of land built over centuries, from the shoreline to the inner valleys up to the highest altitudes at which the trees can flower.

The Olive Tree Museum, in a beautiful Art Nouveau building built to house the Fratelli Carli's Headquarters and still part of the company complex today, displays the noteworthy collection of items collected by the Carli family and shows the intertwined evolution of the olive tree and of civilization over a period of 6,000 years.

The Museum visit is organized into a path that winds through 18 rooms, beginning with the fascinating history of the olive tree, its cultivation and impact onto the whole Mediterranean area, starting the journey in Phoenician cities 6000 years ago, then moving through Greece, Italy, and Spain. The museum path continues showing the many uses of olive oil, (food, cosmetics, lighting), the significance of the Mediterranean Diet and proceeds to describe into details the tie between Liguria and olive oil production, diplaying real examples of mill components.

Highlights of the collection certainly are a 2500 years old Etruscan aryballos (an oil ampoule), a lekythos (prestigious ointment vessel) from Athens (500 b.C.), and, the museum's rarest find, a Corinthian lagynos (550 b.C.).

Visitors will also definitely enjoy the faithful and lifelike reconstruction of a Roman ship carrying olive oil amphora and will be amazed by the Carli's family collection of lamps and cruets.

Until November 30th visitors entering the museum can also visit the exhibition "Old trades of Liguria" by famous painter Emanuele Luzzati.

The Olive Tree Museum is open every day, except on Sundays, from 9 am to 12.30 pm and from 3 pm to 6.30 pm. It will be exceptionally closed from Tuesday December 8th to Sunday December 27th 2015

The Museum can be reached by freeway from Milan, Turin, Genoa and Nice and by train stopping at Imperia Oneglia train station

For more information: Olive Tree Museum - Via Garessio 13, Imperia - Phone +39 0183 295762 - info@museodellolivo.com