The oldest olive mill in Liguria sits at the head of a sheltered inlet, at Varignano Vecchio in the hamlet of Le Grazie: two presses, the settling tanks and an open-air cella olearia that must have held at least fifty jars, laid out according to the rules of Cato's De agricultura. The Roman villa that housed them took its present shape in the Sullan period, between 90 and 80 BC, over an older building of the late second century BC in which seven rooms with wall decoration and fine floors have been identified. The excavations that brought it all to light ran from 1967 to 1986, and some scholars would recognise here the perfect villa in a well-sheltered bay that Varro describes.
What to see
The complex falls into two parts: the owner's quarters, the pars urbana of 1320 square metres, and the working area, the pars fructuaria of 1760, separated by a courtyard of 4800 square metres given over to the torcularium. The apartments of the dominus spread horizontally, with a portico open to the sea, atria paved in mosaic and rooms for daytime living and for sleeping. Around them lay an estate of some 30,000 square metres planted with olives, perhaps with patches of woodland and pasture, and the villa had its own dock: from there the other properties of the gulf and the harbour of Luna, nearby Luni, were reached by sea.
When oil production stopped in the first century AD, the bailiff's quarter, the vilicus, was rebuilt and fitted with a private balneum, with heated rooms and hot and cold pools. To feed it, a two-aisled cistern was dug, plastered with hydraulic mortar and vaulted over: an example with almost no parallel among Roman buildings in northern Italy. The house went on being used until the early sixth century; from the end of the tenth, monks brought the land back into cultivation and used the ruins as terrace walls, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the three farm buildings went up, and the great cistern, never fully buried, became a store for tools and a shelter for animals.
Visiting
The archaeological area lies at Le Grazie, on the western shore of the Gulf of La Spezia, and includes the museum holding the finds from the digs. It is a state site: opening days and hours are limited and worth checking before you set out. You can reach it by car or on the line buses between La Spezia and Porto Venere, dropping down towards the village of Le Grazie; the sanctuary of Le Grazie is a few minutes away on foot.
Our editors' tip
We suggest starting at the torcularium courtyard rather than at the owner's house: that is where the rest falls into place, with the presses and the tanks lined up towards the cella olearia. Then look at the two-aisled cistern from below, for the vaults, and walk out towards the Seno del Varignano, the inlet at whose head the dock once stood: the landscape that persuaded a Roman owner to build here can still be read.