Villa Caviciana
On the wooded north shore of Lake Bolsena, a 144-hectare organic farm of vines, olives and forest — a German couple’s life’s work, and the FAI’s first working estate.
At a glance
Villa Caviciana spreads over 144 hectares on the northern shore of Lake Bolsena, near Gradoli in the Tuscia, looking across the water to the Isola Bisentina. It is a working organic farm: about twenty hectares of vineyard, thirty-five of olive grove, the rest forest and pasture, with its own oil press and winery. A German couple, Fritz and Monika Metzeler, built it from abandoned land beginning in 1989. In 2022 their foundation gave the estate to the Fondo Ambiente Italiano, which made it the trust’s first agricultural property — kept not as a museum but as a farm.
Key facts
- Location: Gradoli, province of Viterbo, Lazio — northern shore of Lake Bolsena
- What it is: a 144-hectare organic agricultural estate (the FAI’s first)
- Land: about 20 ha vineyard, 35 ha olive grove (some 7,000 trees), the rest forest and pasture
- Founded: from 1989, by Friedrich Wilhelm “Fritz” and Monika “Mocca” Metzeler
- Buildings: an oil press and winery, designed by the German architects Bernard Korte and Wolfgang Döring in local tufo stone
- Given to the FAI: 2022, by the Fondazione Fritz e Mocca Metzeler
History
On holiday in the Tuscia in the late 1980s, a Düsseldorf lawyer, Friedrich Wilhelm Metzeler, and his wife Monika, an art collector, fell for the landscape above Lake Bolsena. From 1989 they began buying the abandoned, overgrown land near Gradoli and turning it back into a farm.
Over the following decades they built an estate from scratch. They planted some seven thousand olive trees across thirty-five hectares and twenty hectares of vineyard, and raised their own oil press and winery — designed by the German architects Bernard Korte and Wolfgang Döring in local tufo stone — to make oil, wine and honey, with cheese and meat from the first sheep and pigs. They worked organically long before it was common.
In 2022 the Fondazione Fritz e Mocca Metzeler gave Villa Caviciana to the Fondo Ambiente Italiano. It became the FAI’s first agricultural estate — a deliberate choice. The Italian landscape is mostly rural, the FAI argued, and to protect it you have to keep farming it; Villa Caviciana is where it tries to prove the point.
What you see
The estate is a landscape rather than a building. Vineyards and olive groves run down toward Lake Bolsena, broken by woods of pine and chestnut and by open meadow, with the Isola Bisentina out on the water. At its centre stand the working parts — the cantina and frantoio — built low in tufo stone, modern but tuned to the place.
This is a farm that still farms. Visitors meet oil, wine and honey in the making, organic methods in practice, and a stretch of historic Tuscia countryside kept productive rather than frozen.
Practical information
- Open as a FAI property and a working organic farm; check FAI opening times, tastings and booking
- A rural estate — comfortable shoes and time to walk help
- Views over Lake Bolsena and the Isola Bisentina
- Allow 1.5 to 2 hours
Getting there
Gradoli sits above the north-western shore of Lake Bolsena, in the Tuscia of northern Lazio. The estate is in the countryside outside the town. Viterbo and Orvieto are the nearest larger centres; the lake is reached by road, and a car is the practical way to arrive.
Nearby
- Lake Bolsena and the Isola Bisentina
- The town of Gradoli and its Palazzo Farnese
- Bolsena and the Via Francigena
Sources
- Fondo Ambiente Italiano (FAI) — property page
- Comune di Gradoli / Tuscia tourism
- Viterbo Today
- Italian wine and food press
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