Castel Gandolfo Culture

Castel Gandolfo's culture is shaped by one institution and one landscape, and the two do not always point the same way.

The institution is the papacy. For four hundred years the town has been where popes went in summer, and the rhythm of the place still changes when one is in residence. The parish church is by Bernini, built for a pope; the hill above the lake carries the Vatican Observatory; the palace is not Italian territory at all.

The landscape is the Castelli Romani — the ring of hill towns south of Rome that Romans have escaped to for the summer since antiquity and still do at weekends. That gives the town a food and wine culture it shares with its neighbours rather than one of its own, and a strong sense of being a resort as much as a town.

It has its own speech. The town is colloquially known as Castello in the Castelli Romani dialects.

Villa-building is the other inherited habit. The shore of Lake Albano is ringed with summer residences, villas and cottages built in the seventeenth century, when the papal court's presence drew the Roman aristocracy and upper bourgeoisie up here after it.