Rome Festival Celebrates Olio di Roma PGI and the City’s Olive Oil Heritage

Summary

The Olio di Roma IGP Festival in Rome show­cased the city’s cul­tural and agri­cul­tural her­itage through var­i­ous events, coin­cid­ing with the city’s leg­endary birth date. The fes­ti­val included olive oil tast­ings, culi­nary demon­stra­tions, and the pre­sen­ta­tion of the book ​“L’Olio di Roma,” with the con­clu­sion fea­tur­ing the L’Eterno Award hon­or­ing those who pro­mote olive oil cul­ture and Roman her­itage.

Rome hosted the inau­gural edi­tion of the Olio di Roma IGP Festival from April 10 to 21, high­light­ing the city’s cul­tural and agri­cul­tural her­itage through a wide-rang­ing pro­gram that drew strong inter­est from the pub­lic and sec­tor pro­fes­sion­als.

The tim­ing of the ini­tia­tive was delib­er­ate. The fes­ti­val coin­cided with the day mark­ing the city’s birth: accord­ing to leg­end, Romulus founded Rome on April 21, 753 B.C., when he traced the first sacred fur­row defin­ing its orig­i­nal bound­ary, on a day already con­se­crated to the ancient pas­toral feast of the Palilia.

The fes­ti­val fea­tured olive oil tast­ings, talks, live culi­nary demon­stra­tions, edu­tain­ment work­shops for schools and guided tours, along with the pre­sen­ta­tion of the book ​“L’Olio di Roma,” pub­lished by the Rome Chamber of Commerce and curated by Agro Camera.

The con­clud­ing day fea­tured the L’Eterno Award in the pres­ti­gious set­ting of the Curia Iulia, the ancient seat of the Roman Senate. The recog­ni­tion hon­ored indi­vid­u­als and orga­ni­za­tions that con­tributed to pro­mot­ing extra vir­gin olive oil cul­ture and Roman her­itage.

Among the hon­orees were jour­nal­ist Susanna Savage, the Italian team com­pet­ing in the Bocuse d’Or, Rai day­time direc­tor Angelo Mellone, jour­nal­ist Patrizia Miotti on behalf of the tele­vi­sion pro­gram Donnavventura, oncol­o­gist Debora Rasio, fash­ion designer Ilaria Venturini Fendi, fencer Daniele Garozzo, Marika Aakesson on behalf of the IED Istituto Europeo di Design and for­mer Colosseum Archaeological Park direc­tor Alfonsina Russo.

“We thank the insti­tu­tions for wel­com­ing this ini­tia­tive in the Eternal City,” Tiziana Torelli, vice pres­i­dent of the Olio di Roma PGI Consortium, told Olive Oil Times. ​“With this fes­ti­val we aim not only to pro­mote an agri-food excel­lence, but also to pre­serve a liv­ing cul­tural legacy, capa­ble of con­nect­ing his­tory and future through the bond between com­mu­nity, land­scape and the sup­ply chain.”

The event con­cluded with a guided visit to the Palatine Hill olive grove within the Colosseum Archaeological Park. It is one of the oleo­tourism itin­er­aries pre­sented by the Olio di Roma IGP Consortium as part of a pro­gram show­cased the pre­vi­ous day at the Temple of Hadrian.

The con­sor­tium also signed and pre­sented the mem­o­ran­dum of under­stand­ing ​“Le vie dell’Olio di Roma IGP” (“The Routes of Rome’s PGI Olive Oil”) with the Italian travel indus­try fed­er­a­tion FIAVET and ITS Turismo Academy.

Aimed at inte­grat­ing cul­ture, gas­tron­omy and ter­ri­tory, the agree­ment is designed to high­light Roman olive grow­ing as a his­toric and iden­tity-defin­ing her­itage while expand­ing expe­ri­en­tial and sus­tain­able tourism activ­i­ties that sup­port the local econ­omy and cer­ti­fied sup­ply chains.

Below are three sites included in the oleo­tourism itin­er­aries pre­sented at the Olio di Roma IGP Festival.

Palatine Hill Olive Grove — Since ancient times, olive trees have been an inte­gral part of the Palatine Hill land­scape, which today con­tains the remains of Roman emper­ors’ res­i­dences. In his ​“Naturalis Historia,” Pliny the Elder men­tions ​“ficus, olea, and vitis” — fig tree, olive tree and vine — among the plants cul­ti­vated in the area.

Today, the Palatine Hill olive grove is home to 189 olive trees from dif­fer­ent peri­ods, includ­ing cen­tury-old spec­i­mens near the Arch of Titus. From them, an Olio di Roma IGP-cer­ti­fied extra vir­gin olive oil is pro­duced to enhance their archae­o­log­i­cal and land­scape value.

Temple of Hercules Victor — The old­est mar­ble build­ing in the city, the Temple of Hercules Victor stands in the archae­o­log­i­cal area of the Forum Boarium, which served as the meat mar­ket in ancient Rome. Also known as the Temple of Hercules Olivarius, it was built in the 1^st cen­tury B.C. by the Roman cor­po­ra­tion of olive oil pro­duc­ers and ded­i­cated to Hercules, pro­tec­tor of the agri­cul­tural world.

An expres­sion of the long­stand­ing rela­tion­ship between olive oil pro­duc­tion and the ancient Roman world, it is, together with the Pantheon and the Temple of Portunus, one of the three Roman tem­ples pre­served in their entirety.

Monte dei Cocci in Testaccio — In the heart of Rome’s his­toric Testaccio dis­trict, near the site of the ancient Roman river port, Monte Testaccio, also known as Monte dei Cocci, is an arti­fi­cial mound made largely of frag­ments of olive oil amphorae used between the Augustan period and the mid-third cen­tury A.D.

Carefully stacked over time, the shards grad­u­ally formed the hill, which rises 36 meters above street level and has a cir­cum­fer­ence of about one kilo­me­ter. It stands as a one-of-a-kind archae­o­log­i­cal site and an impor­tant source of infor­ma­tion on the eco­nomic devel­op­ment of the Roman Empire and on ancient dietary habits.