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Room 10 – Our Liguria
Deep valleys descending from the Alps to plunge into the sea: valleys and deep stone ridges covered with a thin layer of earth. To be able to cultivate such a land an enormous construction of terracing was needed: the building of the stonewalls to contain the small quantity of earth needed to plant the olive trees. In this way from the lowest levels, up and up, green belt after green belt, Liguria was born: stone upon stone, from the hands of our forefathers, century after century, from the coastal shores until high upon the mountainsides.
From this our Liguria, olive oil journeyed to France, England, Germany and crossing the oceans to north and South America reaching Australia. 

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Look at the view of one of the valleys descending from the Ligurian alps down to the sea, covered by terraced olive groves. If you listen and listening to the words written by Boine in 1911, you can discover how the almost 220,000 kilometres of stone walls in the western part of Liguria were built. A portion of terracing has been reconstructed to demonstrate how our stoney valleys became possible to cultivate with the planting of olive groves. The ships at dock in the port of Oneglia in the year1932 and the wagons loaded with crates full of oil filled cans on the quayside.
 

“Our monuments are not to be found in the cities and towns, they are our “fasce” (green belts) the stones broken by the strength of our “Ligurian arms” and transformed into land for cultivation. This is Liguria...our fathers have not bequeathed us great architectural buildings. Tenaciously, with great fatigue, they religiously built the walls, dry stone walls...thousands, from the coast to the mountainside...walls and terraces, the twisted olive trees as a testimony to their will to have wanted, to have lived, to have proved that they were endowed with greatness of will and strength...” 
 GIOVANNI BOINE

Prototype of can for commerce with the Americas 
Material: hermetic container 
Manufacturing technique: lithography
Origin: Renzetti Oneglia
Dated: XX century 
Use: container for commerce via Sea Ocean

The olive oil was sealed in colourful cans
which were sometimes very imaginative in their decoration and marks, encased in large wooden crates. In western Liguria numerous businesses over many years, developed thousands of markstrademarks, showing the importance of the Ligurian olive oil in the world. Some of the cans were created by designers working from theyr own fantasy; others were designed to meet particular requests from importers. At the beginning they were decorated with simple figures, leafy landscapes or symbolic figures, after which were added famous scenes, famous historical or modern figures.