Among the olive trees over twenty centuries of history
The small settlement of San Vito, in the municipality of Passignano sul Trasimeno, immediately to the east: a few houses, a church and a sort of bell tower that never had bells, perhaps a lighthouse that never received the light it needed to be. To the south the regional road 75 bis of Trasimeno, to the west landed properties of other parties, also covered with olive trees. To the north a very small as well as ancient hamlet, now called “Borgo Monte Luce,” but in the cadastral map of 1847 the word was “Palazzo.”
Property boundaries on the Gregorian cadastre map - 1847
Between these borders lies an olive grove similar to many others. Well tended and free of weeds, one would hardly think that in it, among the trees, are enclosed more than twenty centuries of history. A veritable treasure chest. Not many hectares of land, around 7 and a half in all, which on the surface do not seem to say anything, but if one looks among these plants, things and stories emerge that are certainly not insignificant. First and foremost are the fragments that the soil returns every time it is worked: these are pottery and bricks from Roman times.
Cadastral records in which the owners of the olive mill are listed.
If one moves a few hundred meters northward as the crow flies, there is also the presence of a Roman villa, called Quarantaia from its proximity to this word. Excavated in the early 1890s, part of the foundations of the facility are still visible.
But it is not only these remains that tell the story, there is also a monolith of substantial size, probably an altar for the pressing of olive paste spread on fiscoli. It is not known, precisely, whether this altar is coeval with the unearthed fragments or is later, but what is certain is that these fragments were located near it. In the mid-fourteenth century, bordering the olive grove or at any rate not too far from it, the presence of a mill for grinding olives is attested, which ended up giving rise to fifteenth-century vocabularies to which is added a mid-nineteenth-century one located less than a hundred meters as the crow flies from the olive grove.
To the place names of the late Middle Ages El Molino da Lolio El Molino Vechio Valle de[l] Molino at a distance of more than three centuries, had replaced Molino, along the road leading to the church of San Vito, between the crossroads and the religious structure. To say that one is in the presence of an area devoted to the cultivation of olives and, above all, to the production of oil, is more than legitimate, not least because the oil produced at Lake Trasimeno was highly prized since the Middle Ages. There is no certainty that this oil tradition has its roots as far back as antiquity, although in the Roman villa certainly consumed this product, but the consistent presence of olive trees since the fourteenth century and that of the oil mill in the same period, are certainly not negligible elements. It is therefore a tradition that was consolidated in the early modern age when here, in San Vito, in the second half of the seventeenth century the Perugian monastery of Santa Maria di Monteluce owned an oil mill for the use of the farms it had in this part of Lake Trasimeno. This monastery, in the mid-modern age, was also joined by that of Sant’Agnese, also from Perugia, which like the other was the owner of an oil mill, located about a kilometer and a half south of San Vito, on the border between the municipalities of Passignano and Magione.
The area under study in the Church Cadastre - 1730
But in this area it was not only religious bodies that owned olive groves; prominent individuals of medieval Perugia also owned them, such as members of the Della Corgna family, particularly Teseo and Pier Filippo, in the late fifteenth century, to be joined by Orazio in the early eighteenth century. The Michelotti family, Teo and two of his sons, Roberto and Michelotto, in the second half of the 14th century, who owned a palace inside the castle of Monte Ruffiano whose tower still dominates, from above, the area of the olive grove we are dealing with.
At this same time properties in the area were also held by a member of the Vincioli family, Alessandro di Pellolo, in 1361 sentenced to death in absentia for attempting to overthrow the Perugian government. Sforza di Guido Degli Oddi, had property there in the second half of the 15th century; he was succeeded by his wife, Isabetta Baglioni, as his heir. Finally, the properties held here by Averardo di Guido Montesperelli in the late fifteenth century are worth mentioning.
The cadastral documents in which the Michelotti's properties in the castle of Monte Ruffiano are listed.
Large landowners, in this area, are also mentioned in the mid-19th century, when the brothers Stanislao and Costantino Nicolai appear, strongly linked to the Papal State. Religious bodies and secular owners ended up giving life in this area to an extremely lively reality, almost “blessed” from an agricultural point of view because of its southern exposure and fertile soil.
They were able to deploy such synergies that made this area a kind of laboratory, the fruits of which are still visible and can be touched. Here, more than elsewhere, they were able to experiment with olive-growing techniques and cultivars especially during the two golden periods of olive-growing in the Perugia area, namely in the early modern age and at the beginning of the 19th century.
This occurred in conjunction with the arrival of the Olivetan monks in Isola Polvese-it is no coincidence that some of the plants found in this olive grove are also found on the island hillside-and with the strong promotion of the planting of olive trees by the Papal States in the first decades of the nineteenth century, a state with which the Nicolai brothers were strongly connected. It was perhaps in this context that the planting of species almost unique to the area took place, and now, thanks to the will of its owner, the olive grove is once again becoming the sort of laboratory it was in the past, with the intention of further improving the quality of the oil produced from its fruit.