Emperor’s villa branches out with Hadrian’s olive oil revival

HADRIAN’S VILLA, the second century retreat of Roman Emperor Hadrian, has begun selling limited bottles of “Hadrian’s olive oil”, made with the harvest from olive trees around the Unesco heritage monument.

In a nod to the prosperous lifestyle of the Roman emperor in his 100-acre park in the spa town of Tivoli, 20 miles east of Rome, the site’s curator has restarted production of oil from the 3,500 olive trees in the park, none of which are younger than 200 years old.

Only 78 bottles of the Mediterranean condiment ground from the harvest last month are going on sale, initially at the Villa’s bookshop after Andrea Bruciati, a historian appointed to the post last May, initiated the move.

Dr Bruciati sees the batch of oil as a harbinger of a larger revival of Hadrian’s rustic empire and is marketing produce also from the adjoining park at the renaissance Villa d’este, built by Cardinal Ippolito II d’este, where the curator plans to grow the traditional pizzutella oblong grape that local Italian farmers have abandoned for more lucrative wine production.

“I have always thought of the Villa Adriana and the Villa d’este as not just marvellous artistic and landscape heritage but also as places for … a kind of aware tourism based on slowness, far from the world of dine and dash,” Dr Bruciati told the Corriere della Sera newspaper.