For the first time, a productive farm has become part of FAI‘s Assets: Villa Caviciana, an estate of more than 140 hectares spread between Grotte di Castro and Gradoli (VT)

The new FAI property was officially presented on Friday, February 24th, 2023 at the XXVII National Convention of FAI Volunteers and Delegates, entitled “Curiamo il paesaggio, coltivandolo” (“Let’s care for the landscape, cultivating it”), which took place in Viterbo, at the Teatro dell’Unione, through February 25th, 2023.

Villa Caviciana stretches out on the northern shore of Lake Bolsena, in front of Isola Bisentina, with 20 hectares of vineyards, 35 olive groves and 86 of woodland and pastureland: a piece of historic rural landscape typical of Tuscia and an organic farm that produces oil, wine and honey. It was founded in 1989 by a husband and wife from Düsseldorf and is now named after the Fritz and Mocca Metzeler Foundation, which has donated it to FAI so that it can be taken care of today and for the future, preserving and enhancing this heritage for the benefit of the community.

FAI has entrusted its management to a company of agricultural entrepreneurs, but as owner, it will closely monitor both cultivation and production, assisted by a Committee of Guarantors. This is a new venture for the Foundation, which has accepted the donation because it offers the opportunity to protect a historic landscape while maintaining its productive agricultural vocation. It is yet another way of fulfilling its mission to protect Italy’s cultural heritage, of which the landscape is a fundamental part, as stated in Article 9 of the Constitution.

A PRODUCTIVE FARM

FAI already takes care of olive groves and vineyards in its properties, but as part of historic landscapes or gardens, whose original appearance should be preserved rather than their productive vocation. Villa Caviciana, on the other hand, is and will be a very productive farm: a model in which to implement, and from which to promote traditional but also innovative cultivation principles and practices that are ecologically and economically sustainable.

Villa Caviciana is an opportunity to broaden FAI’s field of action: from historical monuments and gardens, from villas, castles and palaces to a large portion of the landscape, which is equally in need of restoration, management and enhancement, and agriculture is the human activity that has always shaped and maintained it, i.e. cared for it. The landscape in Italy is historically, and continues to be, substantially, rural, and rural civilisation is a fundamental part of the country’s culture and tradition. Villa Caviciana is thus an opportunity to recount the crucial role of the rural civilisation in the protection and enhancement of the landscape, recovering and enhancing ancient knowledge and local traditions, which today are confronted with a profoundly changed scenario: from the climate crisis to the ecological transition, from the abandonment of the country’s rural areas to policies to support farmers, who today must be recognised, also economically, not only as producers, but also as custodians of the landscape.

The new Property in Tuscia, the seventy-first in the Foundation’s history, will be for FAI, the instrument of new cultural communication. Agriculture is culture, and promoting good agriculture means promoting the care of the landscape, the protection of the environment and our health, which are everyone’s heritage.

THE HISTORY OF VILLA CAVICIANA AND THE DONATION TO FAI

Villa Caviciana was founded thanks to a German couples love for the Italian couple. Friedrich Wilhelm, a lawyer from Dusseldorf and Monika Metzeler an art collector, acquired the land of which the estate was composed in 1989. Their dream, which arose after a holiday in Italy, was to build a high quality organic farm, and the hilly area between the municipalities of Grotte di Castro and Gradoli, with gentle slopes, fertile soil of volcanic origin and the mild climate of the lake, seemed the ideal location.

But the land was abandoned and uncultivated, reduced to a shapeless patch of spontaneous vegetation. Little by little, the Metzelers built a modern and efficient early organic estate with their own oil mill and wine cellar, built from the ground up and equipped with the best machinery, personnel and space for oil and wine production. Friedrich and Monika Metzeler called in two great German architects, Bernard Korte and Wolfgang Doring, to design the greenery and buildings, respectively. The winery has a minimalist architecture, essential but refined, with a sophisticated recovery of local materials, such as tuff, which warms the façades with geometric lines. One can read in the forms the search for functionality, but also the desire to fit discreetly into the landscape, which is the absolute protagonist of this story, as demonstrated by the view of the lake from the cellar, framed by the vineyard and a tidy lawn, dotted with contemporary works of art, fading into the olive grove.

And you can see that it is a happy place, thought out and loved. Reason and sentiment have now guided the Fritz and Mocca Metzeler Foundation to donate Villa Caviciana to the FAI, so that the enterprise of this German couple may continue.

THE MANAGEMENT

Professionals will manage Villa Caviciana: three partners, including Giuseppe Scala, a wine producer for generations, and Osvaldo De Falco, an entrepreneur in the digital economy branch, who will be supported by a Committee of Guarantors chosen by FAI, made up of scholars and experts in agronomy, agroecology, cultivation techniques and organic production, agricultural economics and innovation, from various Italian universities, with a particular presence of the University of Tuscia, an internationally recognised excellence in agricultural research.

“I am very happy to share this project with FAI in the wonderful Land of the Etruscans,” says De Falco. “We are sure that it will be a very successful initiative, under the banner of organic farming and sustainability, which are at the heart of our work”.

The highly complex donation was made possible thanks to the generous pro bono work of the law firms ADVANT NCTM, Nicolini Cantù, Toffoletto De Luca Tamajo and the notary firm ZNR.