Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo: the Pope's summer town

A balcony over a volcano

Castel Gandolfo is a single street of a town on the rim of an extinct crater, with a lake at the bottom of it. That is the whole geography, and it explains everything: why the emperor Domitian built a villa here, why the popes chose it for their summers, and why every terrace in the town looks at the same view.

Lake Albano fills the crater — round, deep, dark blue, ringed by wooded slopes. From the town above you look straight down at it. From the shore below you look up at the town. Both are worth doing, and they are a ten-minute drive apart.

It is forty minutes from central Rome, and it is the classic Roman escape: cooler air, water, and lunch with a view.

How to get to Lake Albano from Rome

Castel Gandolfo sits about 25 km southeast of the city. By car it is roughly forty minutes: out on the Appian Way if you want the scenic version, or the Via dei Laghi if you are in a hurry. The last stretch climbs the outside of the crater, and the lake appears all at once when you reach the rim.

There is also a train. The Rome–Albano line leaves from Roma Termini and stops at Castel Gandolfo in about forty minutes, and the station is a short uphill walk from the main square. It works well if the town is all you want.

What the train does not solve is everything below and beyond the town: the lake shore, Nemi, the ridge roads. Those are the reason most people come, and they need a car.

Where to park

This is the part nobody explains, and it decides how the day goes.

The town itself is one narrow street, and you cannot drive through the centre of it. Leave the car on the approach roads before the historic centre, where the marked bays are: blue lines are paid, white lines free where you find them. Arrive before mid-morning and it is straightforward; arrive at one o'clock on a July Sunday and it is not.

Down at the lake there is roadside parking along the shore, closer to the lidos. It fills from late morning on summer weekends and empties again after five. If you plan to swim, going down early and coming back up for the evening view is the better order.

The simplest approach: park once above for the square and the terrace, then drive down and park again by the water. The two are ten minutes apart and there is no point trying to do both from one spot.

The papal palace

The Palazzo Apostolico dominates the main square. For nearly four hundred years it was the summer residence of the popes, a small sovereign enclave with its own farm, observatory and gardens. In 2016 it was opened to the public as a museum: the papal apartments, the private chapel, the portraits of every pope who slept there.

Whether the palace is being used or visited changes with each pontificate, so check the current arrangements before you build the day around it.

The Barberini Gardens behind it are the better half. They sit on the ruins of Domitian's imperial villa, and the walk runs along a terrace with the lake on one side and Roman substructures on the other. Tickets are separate from the palace and visits are usually guided.

The square itself, Piazza della Libertà, holds a Bernini fountain and Bernini's church of San Tommaso da Villanova. It is small, elegant and shaded, and the cafés on it charge for the view — which, to be fair, they have.

The lake below

A narrow road switchbacks down from the town to the shore, where there are lidi with sun loungers, kayak and pedalo hire, and a few restaurants with tables on the water.

You can swim in Lake Albano. It is a volcanic crater lake, cold and clean, and Romans have been coming here to swim all summer for as long as anyone remembers. There is no sea here, so this is the sea.

At the far end lies the Emissario, a drainage tunnel cut through the crater wall in the fourth century BC to control the lake's level — one of those Roman engineering works that would still be impressive if it had been built last year.

The lakeside road that circles part of the shore is one of the best short drives in the area: shaded, quiet, and with the water flashing between the trees.

What to eat

This is porchetta country like the rest of the Castelli, but by the lake the local habit is fried food and white wine at a table with your feet almost in the water. Ask for the day's fish only if the restaurant looks like it means it — the lake is not fished commercially.

Lunch runs from one o'clock onwards. Nobody is in a hurry.

When to go

Late spring and September are the sweet spot: warm enough for the lake, quiet enough for the town.

July and August bring Romans in numbers at the weekend, and the shore road can fill up. Go on a weekday, or go early.

Winter has its own argument: the town is empty, the air is sharp, and the view down into the crater on a clear cold day is at its most dramatic.

Avoid Monday, when several sites close.

Doing it properly, in one day

Come out of Rome on the Appian Way rather than the ring road, and climb to Castel Gandolfo for the middle of the morning, before the coaches.

Walk the square, look over the parapet, then drive down to the lake for lunch and, if it is warm, a swim.

In the afternoon, follow the rim road round to Nemi — the smaller, wilder crater lake fifteen minutes away — and end the day on the ridge at Tusculum, where the sun goes down behind Rome.

Three craters, one lunch and a sunset. It is more than most people manage in a week here.