Olives and oil in medieval Italy

Throughout history, the olive tree has risen to become an element that defines the identity of the Mediterranean landscape and civilisation. A similar path has been followed by olive oil, in which it is identified – on the basis, more or less justified, of ancient food and culinary traditions – as one of the cornerstones of the recently invented so-called ‘Mediterranean diet’. The spread of olive-growing and the production and consumption of oil have in reality known times, spaces and destinations quite different from the homogeneous image that is often proposed of it nowadays, even in its projection towards a Middle Ages that appears more and more ‘fantastic’ in this sense. The history of this plant and its product becomes a cross-section of the transformations of nature, economic structures and culture in the Italian Middle Ages.