What is the oldest tree in Fara in Sabina?
The oldest tree mapped in Fara in Sabina is an olive at Canneto Sabino known locally as l'Olivone, standing alone in a grove at Casale Bertini. Its age is genuinely disputed: Italy's national tree register gives a dendrological estimate of about 2,005 years, other sources put it nearer a thousand years and tie it to an 11th-century Benedictine land reclamation, and a University of Tuscia field study suggests it may be closer to 700 or 800. Like most ancient olives it is hollow, so there are no rings left to count and no way to settle the dispute from the tree itself. It measures 6.40 metres round at the register's own reference height, though the girth varies from 5.60 to 7.20 metres depending on where it is taken, because a trunk this old is really a bundle of fused stems. It still produces olives every year.
The olive grows in an olive grove at Casale Bertini, near the hamlet of Canneto Sabino in the comune of Fara in Sabina, Rieti province, Lazio, about an hour north of Rome. It stands directly on the Via di Francesco, a long-distance pilgrim route, and is a stop many walkers already pass. There is no public transport to the grove itself; it is reached on foot or by car. The tree is on private agricultural land but functions as a public landmark: local festivals are held beneath it, and it is signposted as a point of interest on the pilgrim route. No fee or permit is recorded. During the Second World War, villagers reportedly used the tree's hollow trunk to hide supplies, a detail repeated by more than one local source. The tourist claim that this is the largest olive tree in Europe, or even in Lazio, is explicitly debunked by the national tree register itself, which still rates it among the region's most significant specimens on age and history rather than raw size.
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