Olive trees in Sicily

History, legend and curiosities…

The cultivation of olive trees in Sicily has ancient roots, thousands of years. It was the Phoenicians and the Mycenaeans who brought this plant to the island, native to the regions north-east of the Caspian Sea. The Greeks of Sicily, then, gave great importance to the olive tree so that eradicating even a single tree was a penalty of exile. Its history has had alternate phases, with the decline of the Roman Empire and the Arab domination in Sicily, the cultivation of the olive tree (read more)…