Latina and the Pontine hills

To the south of Lazio, in the province of Latina, there is an olive sector spread over 10 thousand hectares in the foothills and hills of the Lepini, Ausoni and Aurunci mountains.
A 100km long terrace behind the Pontine countryside and sloping towards the sea, where the variety of Oliva Itrana reigns supreme. It takes its name from Itri, a town south of the province.
A typical and unique landscape enriched by the presence of “Macere” Dry-stone walls pulled up with stones taken directly from the rock emerging from the ground, especially in the mountainous stretches where the slope is too high.
The cultivation of the Itrana variety and the resulting production of oil and table olives have been part, since ancient times, of the history and culture of the production area of ​​the province of Latina.
In the first centuries BC it was the Greeks, who came to the Tyrrhenian Sea to look for metals, iron and copper, who brought a sophisticated culture of the vine and the olive tree. Recent history, on the other hand, brings us back to an eighteenth-century edict, promoted by the Papal State and available in the historical archive of Latina, in which it granted a prize of 10 scudi for every 100 olive trees planted, thus favoring the spread of olive growing, which in 1786 occupied 48,901 hectares of cultivated land, and laying the foundations for a strategy of reclamation of marshy land. In the same period was born the romantic and legendary figure of Michele Pezza, known as Fra ‘Diavolo, a native of Itri, son of a modest olive and oil trader, who history has not yet clarified whether he was more brigand, revolutionary or victim of events. If the olive tree is a symbol of peace it cannot really be said that being born between olives and oil has made him a model of universal harmony.