The idea of an exhibition in Asti on diet in the ancient world draws its inspiration from the guidelines of Expo 2015 in Milan, “Feeding the Planet. Energy for Life”, which point out that “the quality and wholesomeness of food go hand in hand with the long-established traditions of farming and animal husbandry of local peoples and communities, the fruit of thousands of years of experience onto which strong scientific and technological innovations are now being grafted”.
Today as in the past, food is one of the main factors that define a civilisation; closely connected to the social and religious sphere, it contributes to creating a sense of belonging and what we call “cultural identity”, and from there to intercultural communication.
The exhibition Alle origini del gusto. Il Cibo a Pompei e nell’Italia antica (At the Origins of Taste. Food in Pompeii and Ancient Italy), promoted by the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Asti and the Fondazione Palazzo Mazzetti and curated by Adele Campanelli and Alessandro Mandolesi, takes visitors on a journey to the origins of Italian eating habits in a setting, Asti and its surrounding area, renowned for agricultural and food production rooted in a past rich in local evidence.
Starting from an invitation to a Roman banquet and travelling back in time, also through in-depth looks at some significant products of the land (wheat, oil, wine), a comprehensive picture is built up of the dietary and production habits of the major ancient peoples who lived in Italy.
It is an innovative and original approach based on the meeting of archaeology and technology, in which reconstructions of the activities and eating habits of the Romans will, each time, highlight particular situations relating to the other important civilisations that developed on Italian soil: from the Greeks to the Etruscans and the Italic peoples. Our knowledge of Roman food production and cooking, and to some extent of Greek and Etruscan cooking too, is extensive and based on many different kinds of sources: literary, archaeological and palaeo-environmental. Written texts in particular are numerous: examples include the well-known recipe book that has come down to us under the name of Apicius, Trimalchio’s dinner in Petronius’ Satyricon, or the Hedypatheia of Archestratus of Gela, a sort of first gastronomic guide of the ancient world, but the list could go on for a long time. The body of information provided by archaeology is also remarkable, above all the wealth of data from the Vesuvian area: Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, towns buried by the eruption of AD 79, have yielded figurative depictions, rooms complete with furnishings, impressions of crops, botanical and zoological remains and even actual carbonised food.
A sequence of places and settings linked to the consumption, processing and production of food corresponds to the various sections of the exhibition, with an approach designed to illustrate both the preparation and presentation of food and farming techniques, including the reconstruction of an ancient Italian agricultural landscape.
During the exhibition it is possible to visit the Roman domus of via Varrone, dating from the second half of the 1st century AD, located near the western city gate (Torre Rossa) where the decumanus maximus (corresponding to today’s Corso Alfieri) ended. Among the remains of the building, reopened to the public with an updated display, the mosaic carpet that decorated the floor of the dining room (triclinium) is of particular interest.
The educational programme, designed to involve nursery, primary and lower secondary school pupils, consists of guided tours led by specialist staff and workshops set at different levels of depth.
A new series of lectures will be devoted to some aspects of diet in antiquity, starting in March and continuing monthly until June. In particular, the topics will include wine, olive growing and oil production, but also diet in Pompeii in the light of the results of studies on organic and plant remains (such as seeds, fruit and bread that survived the eruption of AD 79), and food consecrated to the gods.