the olive presses in Koper. After the olives were badly damaged by cold in the winter of 1782-83, the Senate of Venice called on the patricians in Koper to advance studies of agriculture, particularly of olive groves. Eventually, Marquis Girolamo Gravisi wrote a Memoir on the olive trees in 1794-95. The Republic of Venice fell to the French army led by Napoleon in 1797, with Trieste occupied in April 1797. The pension paid to the Gravisi was stopped, and the Gravisi started a long correspondence with the Austrians and the French to get it restored. In October 1808 Girolamo Gravisi was named by the French viceroy Eugène de Beauharnais as a candidate for the Senate of the new Kingdom of Italy. He died in Koper on 31 March 1812 aged 92. The Gravis family owned the castle of Pietrapelosa until the final abolition of the feudal system in 1869. They were the only aristocratic family in Koper to own such an estate. As late as 1878 Caterina De Gravisi, widow of Giuseppe Gravisi, was recorded as the owner of the Palazzo Gravisi Buttorai in Koper. References Istrian Italian people Republic of Venice families