Núcleo Museológico do Azeite – Sarnadas de Ródão

Former 20th-century olive press in Sarnadas de Ródão that documents all stages of olive oil production, from the arrival of the olives.

Ask the museum for opening hoursFree admission

Website Directions

About the museum

The Núcleo Museológico do Azeite (Olive Oil Museum Unit), in Sarnadas de Ródão, complements the Lagar de Varas in Vila Velha de Ródão and documents all stages of olive oil production, from the arrival of the olives to the flow of the golden liquid. It has preserved a press from the first half of the 20th century, a stage of innovation in the municipality's olive oil production, marked by its architectural structure and the mechanisms used. The Lagar de Varas documents an earlier phase.

The unit is housed in a restored former press, with three rooms. In the reception room are the granite bins (tulhas), the scale on which the olives were weighed, the electric worm conveyor (sem-fim) that carried them to the crushing mill (pio de moenda), the water-pressure pump that operated the hydraulic devices and the pomace separator. The machine room shows the metal crushing mills and two hydraulic presses with their pressing mats (seiras). The oil room presents the decanting, the measures and the small objects of the master miller (mestre lagareiro).

The complex shows how this olive oil region knew how to incorporate updated technologies to produce its oil.

Highlights

Restored press from the first half of the 20th century
Granite bins, scale and electric conveyor
Metal crushing mills and two hydraulic presses
Objects of the master miller and oil decanting
Free admission and free parking

Permanent exhibition

Lagar da primeira metade do século XX – Three rooms with the granite bins, the hydraulic presses and the objects of the master miller, showing olive oil production from the reception of the olives to decanting.