Sant-Andria church was built between 1777 and 1817 replacing the former Sant’Andria Vecchio sanctuary which was falling into ruins. The church was classified as a historical monument on June 11, 1956 for its architectural quality, its rich baroque décor and the presence of numerous works of art among which are a triptych from the beginning of the XVI th century.
Dating back to 1390, this building replaced the one built in the Middle Ages. It is one of the oldest convents in the Nebbiu classified 3rd on the island at the Narbonne chapter in 1260. The number of monks was never very high. With twenty-five cells, it housed 18 monks among whom were 3 priests and a few clerics.
The chronicles relate that already in the XV th century the priest celebrated the service with two guns on the altar to put a curb on the faithful. During the island’s fight for independence, the monks traveled the countryside on horseback to round up crowds for the national cause. Several councils took place in the convent : September 7, 1745, May 6, 1747, August 1, 1750, May 23, 1753.
In 1758, taking advantage of the monks’ learning, Pascal Paoli created a national printing shop in the convent, la Stamperia della verita where numerous articles with a historical or philosophical content were edited. “Francois Piazza, specialist in Italian, possessing a doctorate he had defended at the Sorbonne, enlightened us about the works of justification and where the printing shop of the XVIII th was located in Corsica. He then revealed to the public that the printing shop in the convent of Oletta had never really existed. The reference to the convent’s printing shop was used in a symbolic manner”. In 1768, the French people landed in Saint-Florent, took possession of Oletta and occupied it.
In 1769 they established their headquarters in the convent. On February 13 th Father Francescu Antone Saliceti, his parents and friends left Oletta, occupied by Mr. d’Arcambale’s soldiers. From that point would begin their offensive against Paoli’s troops that found its epilog on May 8, 1769 in Ponte Novu with the defeat of the national troops. A plot against the French occupying forces named the “Oletta conspiracy”, was secretly prepared by Father Saliceti called “Peverone” at Pascal Paoli’s request, but was thwarted following some allegations. 5 young men were condemned, tortured and deprived of burial.
Amongst them was Don Petru Leccia, 23 years old, tortured on the wheel. His body had to remain exposed on the public square. Maria Gentile, his fiancé, challenging the ban, gave him a Christian burial in the convent’s chapel. Her courage provoked General de Vaux’s leniency. Above the convent’s lateral door there is a commemorative plaque recalling the martyrdom of 5 patriots tortured and deprived of a Christian burial on September 25, 1769.
In 1769 the clergymen were chased away, then moved back in 1854 before definitively leaving the convent when the Church and State separated. In January 1915, the convent of Oletta received 120 mental health patients. A few months later, civilians of German or Austro-Hungarian origin arrested in other departments would be detained there. On September 17, 1917, one year before it closed, there were 150 internees including 43 Germans and 53 Austro-Hungarians living in the camps. Between 1939 and 1945, the successive armies occupied the premises and also used it as a warehouse. In the 60’s, the convent of Saint-François was occupied by Benedictines. Stella, the last nun, lived there until 1990 with only candlelight. It remained unoccupied for ten years before being squatted.
The three-story building in ruins and having 17 cells for monks, had been put up for sale at the end of the last century. There was no electricity, only one faucet, caved-in floors, holes in the flagstone roof and its church ransacked. Not able to take charge of the restoration cost, the municipality gave up its preemptive right. It found a buyer in the spring of 2001. It is currently owned by an individual, safeguarded and showcased by the association VMF, Heritage in movement, created in 1958. The chapel whose construction goes back to the end of the XII thcentury and the beginning of the XIII thcentury, property of the association cited above, is protected and registered under Historic Monuments by the decree of November 29, 1974.
Behind this funeral chapel on the Muzzellu hilltop: François de Rivarola, Lieutenant General of the Island of Malta at the service of England (beginning 19 th century). His ancestors had left the Rivarola’s fiefdom in the Mantoue territory and settled in Genoa where they took the name of Rivarola.
In the XV th century, Gregoria Rivarola was promoted to the position of palace Count by the Emperor Maximilien. Charles Quint added the imperial eagle to the coat of arms by the decree of April 15, 1533.
The Rivaloa’s, established in Corsica (in Bastia and Oletta) rallied behind Pascal Paoli. Antonio Rivarola and his sister the Monaca were his trusted friends and his secret agents especially positioned in Livorno. (It’s worth noting that Nicolo de Rivarola received the first British traveler and writer James Boswell in the Family residence in Oletta, during his tour of Corsica to meet Pascal Paoli).
The Romanacce hamlet was abandoned in the years around 1942. The inhabitants lived without water and electricity. Their only source of water was that of the fountain, still present today.
Even if the hamlet is no longer inhabited, it still lives on through the Miracle of the Virgin Mary’s painting which took place in 1737.
The Saint Antoine chapel is situated in Romanacce near the Miracle House. This building with a long design is composed of a unique nave covered by a lower arc-shaped vault, with a façade of a bell tower on a former elevation.
Renovated in 2017, it has given the hamlet a second life and allows people to recharge their batteries in this site full of history.
Discovered by Mrs. Moracchini-Mazel on Oletta’s plains, it was supposedly built in honor of Saint Gregoire the Great. Traditionally made up of a unique nave in the apse, it follows a steady orientation eastward and has small dimensions; 8.2m by 4.75m.
The building material was made up of small limestone stones. A tomb was discovered glued to the apse. Relatively well conserved it was made up of flatstone in the manner called “a cappuccina” joined together in a style close to the Roman period. Inside there was a 1.8m-long skeleton.
On the hills overlooking Alisu there is a grotto where speleologists discovered a deposit of animal bone fossils in January 1991 at the bottom of a very narrow fault deeper than forty meters with several cavities. The deposit is exceptionally rich. Thousands of bones were found with that of prolagus called “rabbit rat”, a cynotherium (type of dog), a deer of Caziot, that of a suidé (known as a boar at the time), etc.
The oldest bones are more than 35,000 years old. All these mammals have disappeared today but remain present in the depths of Oletta.
In 1871, François Piazza, mayor of Oletta and departmental councilor of the administrative district, associated with Mr. Meynard, a silkworm farmer from Vaucluse, created a silkworm farm and a center to remove infected cells from the eggs in accordance with instructions given by Jean Louis Armand de Quatrefages de Bréau and Louis Pasteur. Incubation takes place at the silkworm farm and when the larvae hatch, they are divided up between families that have rooms conducive to silkworms with a constant and dry temperature starting in May, essential for their development. In 1900, there were 84 domestic breeders producing almost 3000 kilos of cocoons.
Oletta’s workshop where infected cells are removed, meets the most favorable hygienic conditions for breeding silkworms and for the health of the personnel responsible for inspection. This last operation, meticulous and delicate, includes, after putting them in a cell and laying the eggs, grinding up the female butterfly and immediately examining under a microscope these cellular elements. It is entrusted to skillful micrographs who know how to separate eggs affected by muridine and especially pepper disease, the silkworm’s N° 1 enemy.
Oletta’s center to remove infected cells from the eggs could therefore deliver a large quantity of carefully selected cocoons to France, Italy and Syria.
A marble quarry located in Muzzello was exploited on several occasions to reveal two types of marble. The Vatican preferred the golden brèche marble of Oletta to the peach flower marble that especially makes up the war memorial of Saint-Florent.
Several attempts to exploit this quarry took place, including on the properties next to it, without a real success because of several problems. The quarry of Muzzellu was exploited before 1914 by a Belgian company but the golden brèche required a strong mastic therefore causing profitability problems. The exploitation started again after the last war, obviously with insufficient means because they were satisfied with gathering blocks that easily broke away from the mass.
Today you can still see the remains of the exploitation on the side of this hill when going back to Saint-Florent.
Yet this ephemeral quarry produced some splendid objects. A piece of the pillar made of Oletta’s marble was exposed at the Universal Exposition of Paris in 1855 made by the marble worker Bertolucci. Some objects were also sent to the Exposition in London in 1862. The peach flower marble made up a large part of the present planned for the wedding of Sophia Loren and Carlo Ponti in Corsica in the 60’s. We can especially find the red marble of Oletta in Saint Marie’s church in Bastia. Some blocks are kept in Bastia’s Museum.