Historic centre of Albano Laziale

The Albano territory, together with the entire area of the Alban Hills, was subject, between about 600,000 and 20,000 years ago,[4] to the activity of the Latium Volcano: this caused the creation of a volcanic terrain, composed largely of peperino and, to a lesser extent, tuff.

)[6] probably saw the introduction of viticulture in Lazio:[11] during this period Alba Longa was destroyed by Tullus Hostilius, its population deported to Rome and the Latin League subjected to Roman rule.

[19] Among the personalities who had villas in the Albano area in the Republican age were Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus,[20] Quintus Aurelius,[21] Lucius Albucius Iustus,[22] Marcus Junius Brutus,[23] and Publius Clodius Pulcher.

Septimius Severus (193-211) decided because of this decentralization to install within the imperial grounds abutting the Appian Way the Legio II Parthica, a Roman legion loyal to the emperor and charged with guarding and patrolling Rome.

[37] The court historian of the Byzantine emperor Justinian, Procopius of Caesarea, reports that during the Gothic War (535-554) Albano was a πολισματα ("polismata"), i.e., a fortified place occasionally defended by permanent troops.

When Pope Paschal II moved to Benevento in 1108 to settle some territorial issues in the Terra di Lavoro, he thought it best to entrust the tranquility of Latium to Ptolemy of the Counts of Tusculum, who was not slow to rebel against papal authority.

[57] In 1203 Pope Innocent III gave the cardinal bishops of the suburbicarian diocese of Albano the possession of the palatium and some churches in the Albano territory, so that they would not be ruined given the desolation of the ancient city:[58] on August 9, 1217, Cardinal Paio Galvão obtained from Pope Honorius III the confirmation of the bishop's power over the "Civitatem Albanensem cum Burgo, Thermis Monte, qui dicitur Sol[is] et Luna, Palatio" and their adjacencies and dependencies.

[59] However, the Savellis succeeded in having the fief invested by Frederick II of Swabia in 1221,[60] and it is probable that from this time they maintained firm control of it, despite yet another confirmation of the bishop's rights over Albano promulgated in 1278 by Pope Nicholas III.

[64] In the thirteenth century, also thanks to the seigniory of the Savelli family, there are signs of a rebirth of the city: in addition to the foundation of the abbey, one of the first "guardianìe" of the Franciscan Order is attested in Albano, active at the then falling cathedral of San Pancrazio,[65] and in 1316 the sanctuary of Santa Maria della Rotonda was consecrated for the second time, at the work of Augustinian nuns.

Pope Pius II wanted to visit the archaeological ruins visible in Albano in the properties of the Abbey of St. Paul during his trip to the Alban Hills in 1462:[72] other stops were Genzano di Roma, the convent of Santa Maria ad Nives of Palazzolo and Monte Cavo.

During the war between Pope Sixtus IV and Ferdinand I of Naples in 1482 the Alban Hills were the main scene of clashes: on June 5 the Neapolitans had occupied the Borghetto di Grottaferrata and from that position began to plunder the Ager Romanus together with troops mobilized by the Colonna and Savelli families.

[85] Chroniclers relate that the pope summoned the prince, who responded with bravado, heedless of threats of imprisonment or beheading for default (he jokingly said that in the latter case he would get a bronze head):[85] Thus the sale by auction of the fiefdom of Albano, worth 440,000 pontifical scudi, was carried out, and it was shortly confiscated by the Apostolic Camera.

[95] Pius VI, in order to meet the war expenses and the huge economic demands (36 million Italian lire and 100 works of art) made by Napoleon Bonaparte to the Papal States first with the Armistice of Bologna and then with the Treaty of Tolentino (Feb. 19, 1797) in 1795 thought of selling Albano: the Prince of Piombino Antonio Maria Boncompagni-Ludovisi, the Banco di Santo Spirito and the Santo Monte di Pietà participated in the auction, making an offer of 300,000 pontifical scudi: in the end, however, the Pope preferred to take out a loan from some Genoese bankers.

[98] The Albano municipal republican government was very active in the first months of the Roman republican period: on Feb. 18 it declared abolished "all the attributes, powers, faculties and rights which by the vile and fierce Oligarchy of the dead Government had been assigned and ascribed to its appointed Ministers,"[99] places of asylum in churches, all "exemptions and jurisdictions" which obstructed the law;[99] on February 19, the tree of liberty was planted in what is now Antonio Gramsci Square,[99] the affiliation of the Albano Republic with the Roman Republic was proclaimed;[100] on February 22, the millstone tax, which had risen in 1798 to 55 baiocchi, was abolished.

[104] On March 1, 1798, Murat returned to Rome, "received with supreme applause and accompanied by the universal cheers of the people":[105] he brought with him "the spoils of the slain rebels,"[105] namely "copper basins, cauldrons, frying pans, rolls of cloth, blankets, sheets, chickens and donkeys,"[104] which made the triumphal entry "a comic and pitiful scene at the same time".

Albano was, from the nineteenth century onwards, due to its geographical location close to Rome and the direct connection represented by the Appian Way, an important resort for the nobility (often deposed sovereigns) and the Roman middle and upper middle classes: Albano's other distinguished guests have included[114] Wilhelm II of Germany, Margherita of Savoy, Manuel II of Portugal, Maria Luisa of Bourbon-Spain, Charles IV of Spain, Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy, Giuseppe Garibaldi and, in more recent times, Farouk of Egypt.

[124] In addition to prisoners of war, another source of cheap labor for the owners were foreign seasonal workers, mainly from Abruzzo and the rest of Lazio: it is estimated that in the three municipalities of Frascati, Marino and Albano alone they numbered 3,000 at harvest time.

[129] In the Italian political and administrative elections of 1921 in Albano, the Socialist Dante Malintoppi won, whose robust junta remained in office until the dissolution imposed by the Fascist dictatorship in 1923.

[31] The building itself was rebuilt by Pope Leo III (795-816) because it was in danger of collapsing due to its age:[141] the conspicuous remnants of ancient columns and masonry brought to light inside the present cathedral date back to this phase.

[142] The church of St. Peter the Apostle is one of the oldest Catholic places of worship in the city: carved out of a room in the Baths of Caracalla overlooking the Via Appia Antica, it was probably founded in the time of Pope Hormisdas (514-523).

[149] In the one-nave interior, in addition to the relics of St. Gaspar, one can admire the 18th-century fresco on the vault and other 18th-century paintings, including an anonymous copy of Pietro da Cortona's "Baptism of St. Paul" preserved at the church of Santa Maria Immacolata on Via Veneto in Rome.

[63] The church of Santa Maria della Stella is one of Albano's most historically rich places of worship, due to the presence underground of the adjacent former convent of the Carmelite fathers of the San Senatore catacombs.

[81] The convent, with an elevation on Piazza Pia but included in the perimeter of the Pontifical Villa of Castel Gandolfo, was, in spite of this, razed to the ground by the Anglo-American aerial bombardment of February 1, 1944 and, later, rebuilt.

In Roman times there were some thermal baths in the area of the palace, according to what can be deduced from several aquarian fistulas of the Domitian age found on the site: around the 13th century it was structured by Luca Savelli or his son Giacomo as a fortification along the Via Appia Antica.

[161] Palazzo Pamphilj, also called the Nazarene College, is one of Albano's largest and most architecturally significant historical palaces: the genesis of its construction was examined in a 1988 study by the Accademia degli Incolti as exemplifying an eighteenth-century patrician building in the Ager Romanus.

The palace and villa were built in the early eighteenth century by Cardinal Bishop Fabrizio Paolucci together with the chapel of San Giobbe, furnished with a painting by Carlo Maratta, and later became the property of the Doria family.

[90] Villa Venosa-Boncompagni was built in 1857 by the Boncompagni family in what is now Borgo Garibaldi on the Appian Way:[90] the garden was renowned, filled with native and tropical plants kept inside twelve large greenhouses.

However, it is possible instead to identify at least three gates: the Porta San Paolo, which opens in Piazza San Paolo near the church of the same name, the only one still standing, and two gates demolished in recent times, the Porta dei Cappuccini, a medieval entrance that opened halfway along the present Via San Francesco d'Assisi, demolished in the last thirty years of the 19th century to widen the street,[173] and the Porta Romana, the most valuable from an artistic point of view, rebuilt under the pontificate of Pope Clement XI in 1713: demolished in 1906 to allow the Tranvie dei Castelli Romani tramway line to pass through,[174] despite the protests of Professor Giuseppe Del Pinto, who succeeded in having the monumental components of the gate saved, now placed in the atrium of Palazzo Savelli.

The structure of the building consists of a cement core of peperino flakes, interrupted in places by bricks:[194] the only entire room is a 37 by 12-meter hall occupied since the early Middle Ages by the church of St.

forest" (i.e., oaks, limes and maples), and survived the massive introduction by man of the chestnut tree between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, a plant that covers about 80 percent of the wooded area of the Castelli Romani Regional Park.