Castel Gandolfo and Lake Albano: the popes on holiday

For four hundred years, every summer, the pope has left Rome to come up here. Castel Gandolfo looks over Lake Albano on one side and the countryside as far as the sea on the other, and its story is that of a holiday that nearly became a state.

Lake Albano

The lake fills a crater of the Alban Hills volcano, like Nemi’s but larger: about 6 square kilometres, up to 168 metres deep, at about 293 metres above sea level. Around 42% of the municipal territory of Castel Gandolfo is water. The ancients already controlled its level with an emissary, a tunnel cut through the rock that tradition dates to about 398 BC, during the war with Veii. The geological story of the hills is in the article on the Alban Hills volcano.

Domitian’s villa

Long before the popes, an emperor spent his summers here. Domitian, who reigned from AD 81 to 96, built an enormous villa on three terraces about 500 metres long each, with a theatre some fifty metres across. The remains lie mostly inside the park of Villa Barberini.

The popes at Castel Gandolfo

• The medieval castle belonged to the Savelli. Because of their debts the Apostolic Camera took it in 1596, and in 1604 it became inalienable property of the Holy See.
• Urban VIII chose it as his summer residence: in 1626 he signed his first bull there, and in 1628 he lived in the new Papal Palace, designed by Carlo Maderno on the old castle.
• Between 1658 and 1661 Bernini built the church of San Tommaso da Villanova on the square in front of the palace, for Alexander VII.
• With the Lateran Pacts of 1929 the palace and the Papal Villas, about 55 hectares, became extraterritorial: they are in Italy but belong to the Holy See.

The war

During the Second World War the Papal Villas sheltered about 12,000 displaced people. On 10 February 1944 a bombing raid hit the Propaganda Fide college and killed about 500 civilians. The same months marked Frascati too.

The observatory and today

From 1933 the palace housed the Vatican Observatory, the pope’s astronomical observatory; since 2008 most observing has moved to Arizona. There is a link with Monte Porzio here too, where the Rome Astronomical Observatory stands.

In 2016 Pope Francis opened the Papal Palace and part of the gardens to the public, run by the Vatican Museums. Pope Leo XIV has returned to spend the summer here, at Villa Barberini. Opening times and tickets are on the Vatican Museums website.

In short

• Where: Castelli Romani, on the edge of Lake Albano.
• The popes: summer residence since 1626; palace by Carlo Maderno; extraterritorial since 1929.
• To see: the Papal Palace and gardens (open since 2016), Bernini’s church on the square, the lake.
• The ancient world: Domitian’s villa at Villa Barberini; the lake’s emissary.
• Nearby: Ariccia, Nemi, the Castelli Romani in one day.