Pontifical Villas of Castel Gandolfo

In the ager Albanus, so called from the memory of the legendary Latin capital, the "mother" of Rome, Alba Longa, the ruins of at least two large Republican villas remain, attributed to Publius Clodius Pulcher[2] and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus.

[4] The last Flavian emperor, Domitian, wanted to build himself a sumptuous villa in the center of this estate, in a panoramic position overlooking both the lake and the coastal plain below.

Septimius Severus built on the edge of the property the encampment of his veterans of the Legio II Parthica, the Castra Albana, of which abundant ruins remain in the historic center of Albano Laziale.

In the 11th century, the powerful Basilian monastery of Santa Maria di Grottaferrata had important economic interests in the area of Castel Gandolfo, which arose and developed on the edge of the ancient imperial and then ecclesiastical property, around a church dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel, first mentioned in 1116.

In 1436, during the war between Pope Eugene IV and the Colonna family (whose allies were the Savellis, along with the Prefects of Vico, in an anti-Orsini capacity), the castle was razed to the ground by Cardinal Giovanni Maria Vitelleschi, field commander of the papal army.

[13] Cardinal Barberini in fact already owned an apartment in Castel Gandolfo, outside the walls near the Porta Romana:[13] and as pope he thought of continuing his castellan vacations, adapting to his new dignity.

[20] Only Innocent XI (1691–1700), finding himself passing through on his way to visit Anzio and Nettuno, spent a night in the Papal Palace: but it was a rainy and foggy evening, and the place made such an impression on him that he never wanted to return.

[19] This privilege generated a minor legal controversy, which was dissolved by Pope Benedict XIII with the apostolic constitution "Aequitatis" of 24 September 1728, which confirmed the jurisdiction of Castel Gandolfo to the then butler Camillo Cybo-Malaspina.

Meanwhile, a number of towns in the Alban Hills (Albano, Frascati, Velletri, later Marino) had also raised the tree of liberty, proclaiming "sister republics" to that of Rome.

":[29] news of the riots quickly spread outside the Aurelian walls, and so Albano, Velletri and Castel Gandolfo rose up against the republican government.

[29] Immediately from Rome, General Jean-Étienne Championnet, the new French commander of the city after Berthier's promotion to the Army of England, sent Joachim Murat to suppress the riots.

[30] He then attacked Albano, which surrendered after weak resistance: chronicles of the time recount that the French brought back to Rome looted pans, mattresses, and silverware, which they resold in St. Peter's Square in the following days, and which the republican newspapers of the Urbe reported as "the spoils of the vanquished enemy.

"[29] The French abandoned Rome under pressing Anglo-Neapolitan troops on 29 November 1798, only to recapture the city on 7 Dec and advance as far as Naples, where Championnet established the Parthenopean Republic.

Pressed one more time by the advance of the Sanfedists, led by Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo of Calabria, the French abandoned Naples and then Rome for good in September 1799.

Pius VII was able to return to the Urbe in March 1814, and as early as October he returned to vacation at Castel Gandolfo, receiving there such illustrious guests as Maria Luisa of Bourbon-Spain, former queen of Etruria and mother of Charles II of Parma,[31] and the King of Sardinia Charles Emmanuel IV of Savoy,[31] with the then Minister of Sardinia in Rome Cesare d'Azeglio and his son Massimo.

[33] Leo XII (1823–1829) passed through the village only once, on 21 October 1824, on his way to the Capuchin monastery in Albano;[31] Pius VIII (1829–1830) would have liked to vacation there, but he reigned only twenty months: at any rate in anticipation of his presence, major work was done to reorganize the garden and water pipes.

[37] Pope Pius XI (1922–1939) immediately wanted to have the Pontifical Villas complex restored, bringing in electric light, telephone and services: work began in 1931,[38] and went on until at least 1939; during these interventions, the current gate to Rome was built, replacing the ancient portal designed by Bernini.

[38] The Observatory, originally located in the Roman College building in the Pigna district, had since 1891 moved to the Vatican at the aforementioned Gregorian Tower, which at that time faced the open countryside.

Italian troops left to defend Rome from a German punitive expedition, although outnumbered, failed in their task because of the lack of information and orders from military commands.

However, news arrived at Allied headquarters in Algiers on 5 Feb that the Pontifical Villas at Castel Gandolfo were "crammed with Nazis," and that the Germans were quietly passing through the town with their vehicles.

On 10 February 1944, between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, two waves of B-17 "flying fortresses" struck the Propaganda Fide college, inside Villa Barberini, in the middle of the extraterritorial zone, massacring unarmed civilians.

[49] The Castles avoided the consequences of a very hard static battle when on the night of 3 to 4 June 1944, an American unit found a breach in the German front on Mount Artemisio.

Beginning with the 1975 Jubilee, the pope began to use the helicopter to travel from the Vatican to Castel Gandolfo:[55][57] the trip takes only about twenty minutes, and this avoided blocking traffic for security reasons as was the case when the papal motorcade passed by.

On 22 September 1974, Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote an article in the Corriere della Sera in which he commented on the now customary "Castel Gandolfo speech" that follows the recitation of the Sunday Angelus, calling it "historic" because the pope would acknowledge in his view that "the new consumerist power is completely irreligious; totalitarian; violent; falsely tolerant, more repressive than ever; corrupting, degrading: therefore, the Marxist intellectual proposed that the Catholic Church stand as the “majestic, but not authoritarian” leader of resistance to rampant consumerism.

John Paul II, on the other hand, had one of the longest pontificates in the history of the Church (1978–2005), and he never failed to vacation at Castel Gandolfo, even during the last period of his harsh illness.

The observatory has five Zeiss telescopes, some of them detached to Villa Barberini, covered by four characteristic domes, which now make the papal complex immediately recognizable even from afar.

As part of the villa, the Audience Hall was built, commissioned by Pius XII in 1957, designed by architect Enrico Galeazzi and inaugurated by John XXIII in 1959.

[62] Of the viaduct, the section that crosses the road, popularly known as the "Colonnade," is visible from the street, which was rearranged under Pius XI with a peperino ashlar facing.

Its foundation was authorized by Pope Urban VIII with a papal bull dated 8 September 1625,[65] but it was not opened until 1631 due to the involvement of Princess Caterina Savelli.

The Piazza Pia in front of it is the largest square in Albano's historic center, opened in the seventeenth century as part of the urban reorganization of the town to create the "trident" of streets.