Frantoio Ipogeo di Palazzo Granafei

Beneath Palazzo Granafei in Gallipoli, a subterranean oil mill preserves rooms and equipment associated with the city's historic olive-oil trade. Carved into local carparo, the complex includes pressing spaces, storage pits, animal stalls and surviving or reconstructed presses.

Why it matters

From the sixteenth century, Gallipoli became a major port for exporting olive oil from the Kingdom of Naples. The trade served domestic use as well as industrial demand for lighting and wool processing, and its wealth helped shape the churches and palazzi above the harbour. The Granafei mill offers a material record of that economy beneath the historic centre.

What to notice

The underground rooms were cut into carparo below street level. Their layout includes milling and pressing areas, deep pits known as sciaghe for storing olives, animal stalls and collection basins. The equipment combines reconstructed two-screw presses modelled on seventeenth-century examples with an original single-screw Genoese-style press and several nineteenth-century presses.

Context and history

Gallipoli's oil trade connected Salento with markets in northern Europe. Oil was shipped by sea and used for illumination before petroleum became widespread, as well as in wool processing. The Granafei mill lay beneath the palazzi D'Acugna and Grassi on Via Antonietta De Pace. The Associazione Gallipoli Nostra restored the premises in 1988 and reconstructed parts of the working equipment. This records the site's restoration history without asserting its present visitor operation.