Sabina Oil Museum

The Sabina Oil Museum is dedicated to the oil of Sabina that the doctor Galen (2nd century AD) defined as the best in the ancient world. The nearby Farfa Abbey was one of the few medieval European centres in which the ancient techniques of olive growing were preserved and then transmitted. The museum is housed in Palazzo Perelli, a 16th century building that has been extensively tampered with and recently restored, but also extends to the historic centre and the landscape. The itinerary begins with a section dedicated to the myth of oil, celebrated by sculptures by contemporary masters Alik Cavaliere, Gianandrea Gazzola, Maria Lai and Hidetoshi Nagasawa. The visit continues with documentation on the botany of the Sabine olive tree and the tradition of olive growing, then with the memory room, where the world of oil is told by the voices and images of the farmers of Calstelnuovo. With a pedestrian path in the countryside, you can reach the early medieval site of San Donato where, near the restored church, the "Garden of the world's olive trees " it houses the different species cultivated in the Mediterranean basin and with them, symbolically, the peoples who share in history and in the present the culture of olive oil. It is part of the territorial museum system of the Middle Tiber Valley.