Olgiata Golf Club

The Olgiata area has existed for over 3000 years. Once home to the Etruscans who built the city of Veio in what is now Veio park, giving rise to a great civilisation, later overshadowed by the Roman Empire. Etruscans conduits and caves are still found in the area. Later, Olgiata’s lands became the battlefields of the great local families, the Anguillara, the Orsini, and the Chigi. These families fought against popes, who came from the very same families. Around the year 1000, in the Medieval era, the feudal system imposed a civic structure with the Castello (castle) or the Maniero (manor house) in the high lands, surrounded by ramparts and houses for protection. In 1566, a rich family of bankers, the Olgiati, arrived in Rome from Como buying up several pieces of land, including the Olgiata from Duke Paolo Giordano Orsini, duke of Bracciano, and calling the estate “Olgiata”. In 1578, Baldassarre Olgiati decided to expand the Olgiata lands, buying the whole Cesano area in order to turn the Olgiata into a fief and thus request a noble title from the pope. Although the family was granted the title Marquis, Duke Orsini took Cesano back after only four years. The Olgiata was traded, subject to bankruptcy, and put up for auction over the course of many years until Marquis Incisa received it as a wedding gift from his mother, a Chigi, in 1930. He moved there with his wife and turned it into a real farm, cultivating flax, barley, oats and wheat. The castle, built between 1400 and 1500, is a typical Roman countryside manor house with surrounding walls and four towers. The little chapel, decorated with magnificent frescoes, is located just outside the walls and has always been part of the San Pancrazio parish of Isola Farnese, a few kilometres from the Olgiata complex. Towards the end of the ’50s, this fabulous green oasis on via Cassi, just a few kilometres from Campidoglio hill, seemed ideal for a great big new golf course. That is how the Società Generale Immobiliare, owner of that little natural paradise, where the great, international champion racehorses Nearco, Tenerani and Ribot were born, sporting the Dormello-Olgiata colours, turned into a town which, soon, also became a sports centre with golf course, swimming pools and tennis courts.Plus