areful historical research has established that olive trees were grown in this part of the modern Friuli-Venezia Giulia region before it was colonized by the Romans. The area got its name when Emperor Augustus, at the time of Rome's greatest expansion, founded the colony of Tergestum, or Tergeste, today known as Trieste.
Leveraging the agricultural knowledge first introduced to the region by the Greeks and the Phoenicians, the olive groves and oil trade were vastly expanded during the Roman Empire. The Roman settlers increased yields so much that olive presses were installed on almost every farm.
However, with the fall of the Roman Empire, local production of olives gradually died. It was not until the Byzantine Empire, at the end of the 8th century, that large volumes of olives were harvested again in Tergeste. The turn-around was so swift that under Byzantine rule, feudal taxes, the so-called decime, were to be paid in olive oil.
Olive cultivation continued to be one of the region’s most important economic activities until 1929, when a devastating frost destroyed most of the groves. It is a credit to the stubbornness of Trieste’s farmers that the local olive growing tradition survived, and in the past couple of decades received a great boost, bringing back to market a variety of olive oil that had been all but lost to the outside world.
