🌳 Witch's Olive Tree

The Witch's Olive Tree (Italian: Olivo della Strega) is a huge old olive tree in Magliano in Toscana, province of Grosseto, with a trunk girth of about 9 metres. It grows in a grove beside the Romanesque church of the Santissima Annunziata. Legends call it a thousand years old and link it with witches, but there is no scientific dating.

Tuscany's official tourism portal describes it as a thousand-year-old tree that has lived through every historical era, from the pre-Roman Etruscans to the present day. The local press speaks of 3,000–3,500 years, but no scientific publication gives such a date, so the figure is best taken as an estimate.

The name comes from a legend. According to the story, in the Middle Ages women accused of witchcraft met secretly by this tree. Another legend holds that even the Etruscans held festivals around it in honour of woodland deities. Neither story is backed by documents, but they are what made the tree famous.

You can reach the tree on foot from the medieval village of Montiano, once a possession of the Aldobrandeschi family; the route involves a climb of about 300 metres. Tuscany's tourism portal lists it among the region's monumental trees.

Why it matters to you. The exact age of old olive trees is almost impossible to establish: the heart of the trunk rots over time, and radiocarbon dating rarely finds the inner wood of living olive trees to be older than 300 years. So “thousand-year-old” is more an image here than a measured figure, and the witch legends belong to local folklore, not to history.