To Castel Gandolfo - PlanetServiceRome

Tour FOr CAstel Gandolfo

The visitor who enters for the first time in the Pontifical Villas of Castel Gandolfo not imagine certain of being in front of the substantial remains of one of the most famous villas of antiquity , the Albanum Domitiani , the grand country residence of the emperor Domitian ( 81 -96 AD) , which was developed for about 14 square kilometers from the Via Appia to include lake Albano . The Pontifical Villas extend over the remains of the central part of the residence, which included , according to the hypothesis formulated by distinguished scholars , even the Arx Albana , located at the hill of Castel Gandolfo, where there is now the Papal Palace , and that once housed the center of the ancient Alba Longa .


The Villa of Domitian was located on the western slope of the hill , overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea . The slope was cut into three large shelves down to the sea . The first , higher, included the homes of the imperial servants , the various departments and tanks , fed by springs Palazzolo - placed on the opposite shore of the lake - via three aqueducts, still partly standing , which supply the Villa and the papal ' town of Castel Gandolfo. On the medial shelf , bounded upstream by a large wall of substructure , interrupted by four nymphs to plant alternately rectangular and semicircular , stood the imperial palace and the theater . The bottom shelf included the cryptoporticus , the great emperor covered walk along originally about three hundred meters. The shelf broke in more then successive terraces , mostly intended for gardens, one of which included the racecourse .


This residence is also equipped for the winter season , rich in natural beauty and magnificent buildings , monuments and works of art , Domitian , the " bald Nero " as he called Juvenal, almost permanently established his residence. On the death of Domitian, the house passed to his successors , but they preferred to establish their homes elsewhere . Hadrian (117-138 ) he spent a few short period waiting to be brought to fruition the villa at Tivoli, and Marcus Aurelius ( 161-180 ) took refuge there for a few days during the rebellion of the year 175. Some years later, Septimius Severus (193-211 ) took it over , in the far south, the castrates his loyalists Parthian legionaries , who camped there permanently with their families.


Thus began the decline of the imperial villa whose monuments , already deprived of their works of art and each precious ornament , were systematically demolished to use marble and tiles in new buildings that gave rise to the first settlement of the town of Albano. Another settlement , mainly farmers, was established north of the villa on the ridge of the lake towards " Cucuruttus " (the actual Montecucco ) giving rise to today's much later Castel Gandolfo. The Emperor Constantine (306-337 ) , who had left the territory of the turbulent Parthian legionaries and their families , including the benefits conferred to the Basilica of St. John the Baptist , the current Cathedral of Albano, also included possessio Tiberii Caesaris , ie the area of the villa Domitian.


Except for a few memories of acts census or assets that relate to these lands, history is silent until the twelfth century . Not so the spoliation of marble and works of art that continued for a long time . In the fourteenth century the looting became systematic , research materials for the construction of the cathedral of Orvieto.

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