The Non-Profit Cultural Organisation “Olivepress - Art Factory” was created in order to save from desolation and ruin the Old Olive Mill of Agricultural Cooperative at Zympragou in Chania, Crete. Its new aim is to accommodate on its premises various arts and cultural events, transforming it into a community art centre and a place of memory in the inland of the island.

The building of the Old Olive Mill consists of a central building core, built with stone masonry in the 1920’s , with additional wings built in successive phases until the 1970’s. In 1980 it stopped functioning as an Olive Mill and was left to quickly deteriorate. During its reconstruction, the goal was to preserve the primary materials of the building along with the original technological equipment with the least possible interference. The machinery of the Oil Mill was made in Greece around the early 1960’s and was preserved as a point of reference, a memory of the initial operations of the space.

Today the “Olivepress - Art Factory” is a multi-cultural organization. It consists of the “Fine Arts Gallery of Chania”“Contemporary Art Museum of Chania”, dedicated to the preservation and presentation of the permanent collection of the “Olivepress - Art Factory” and the promotion, along with the study, of the interactive relations between Contemporary Art and the Human Aspect.

Trying to reinforce the Inland, the «Contemporary Art Museum - Olivepress» has created six programs of Coopertation, Evolvent & Culture: 1: “The Museum Route”,2: “The Gorge Circle”, 3: “CHANIaRT - Visual Arts Journeys in the Regional Unit of Chania”, 4: “Art & Wine - Western Crete Wineries support Culture”, 5. “Olivepress Art Residency”& 6. “Art Podium”.

The Old Olive Mill which was revived as an “Olivepress - Art Factory”, is situated at the village Dromonero, 33 km north-west of Chania (30 minutes by car), on the main road leading to the traditional fishing village of the Libyan Sea with its magical beaches: Paleochora.