The farm

Tenuta Colfiorito – Colfiorito Farm - is situated a few kilometres from Rome, in the Municipality of Castel Madama, at the exact place where a Roman villa stood two thousand years ago. The locality was in fact well known to the ancient Romans, who have left numerous traces here such as the Claudian aqueduct and the villa of the poet Horace.
The farm nestles in the area of the Tiburtine Mountains. It begins just past Tivoli and opens out onto the Empolitana Valley. This is an ancient landscape, still uncontaminated by the proximity of Rome. Here the people have always devoted themselves to the cultivation of olives and vines, and to pastoral farming.

Colfiorito Farm is today a modern agricultural concern that is continuing this age-old tradition.

The farmhouses that are no longer necessary for the business have been partly restored to offer allocation to visitors in a serene environment, evoked in the verses inscribed on the stone set in the atrium of the proprietor’s farmstead, which sums up the philosophy of hospitality, traditional to this place:

“Tu, che sospinto dal desio di pace, per questi lochi vai, ospite amico, di secondar lo mio consiglio face: ogni tuo affanno e ogni pensier rio lascia alla cura del mio corno antico, e lieto vanne... Al resto penso io!"

Translation:
“O thou who driven by desire of peace, most friendly visitor, dost linger here, follow my counsel and all fretting cease: all baleful troubles that do thee molest let my old horn console with music dear, be happy and…. to me leave all the rest...”

In centuries past, the ancient hamlet of Colfiorito Farm was part of a vast rural property of which the main section at its heart, specialising in the cultivation of olives and vines, split off to be farmed separately.

It extends for more than thirty hectares following the slope the hill that is covered by vines and by 5,000 olive trees whose twisted forms show the passage of time. Besides the main hamlet, there are other buildings on the farm, once lived in by peasants working the land. The ancient oil-mill, now only of historical value, still retains its old grindstone and other reminders of times past.The farm is so extensive that is possible to spend whole days relaxing here.

Alternatively, the district offers lots of pleasant walks - in the National Park of the Lucretili Mountains and the National Park of Abruzzo, in the medieval village of San Gregorio in Sassola and in the surrounding areas.
The main attraction remains Tivoli. Here there is not only Hadrian's Villa, a memorable testimony to ancient Rome and now a summer cultural centre, but the 19th century Gregorian Villa is also now open to the public, with walks back along the waterfalls of the River Aniene.

Just restored is the beautiful 16th century park of the other Tivoli villa, the Villa d’Estewith its fountains.