The name of the village came from the family of the Gandolfi,
nobles of the place for about two centuries until 1200. Became then the
Savelli dominion, the fortress it passed on 1467 to Scarampo Cardinal, Bishop
of Albano, who cared the renovation. Re-entry in the dominion of the Savelli,
was definitively removed by the Pope Clemente VIII, because the Savellli
refuses to pay to the Apostolic Room a debit of 150.000 shield. On 1608,
then, was declared "inalienable dominion of the Holy See ". Fundamental
it was the architectonic-urbanistic participation of Bernini for Alexander
VII Chigi, in the second half of 1600. The Chigi family’s owned the
feud of Ariccia and the one of Castel Gandolfo, center of papal summer holiday.
So the Pope asked to Bernini to restructure the palace and to arrange the
suburb on the front. Bernini cared also the manufacturing plan of the church
dedicated to S. Tommaso from Villanova, emerging on the
lake panorama. Watching from the "viewpoint" is it possible to
admire the homonym lake, characterized from a wonderful spot of vegetation
which hides archaeological sites, important like the roman emissary and
two ninfei, one doric and one imperial. The papal residence, where Pope Benedetto XVI lives in the summertime,
constituted from the papal headquarters plus the villas, famous for its
gardens, for the Astronomical Observatory and for the rests
of the roman emperor villa of Domiziano, where the criptoportico
(arcades) is preserved in one of the papal villas together with the historical-archaeological
Antiquarium. It’s quite unknown that in Castel Gandolfo it was instituted
in the 1820 the first "mobile mail box", a shuttle between the
village and the Albano post office.
Altitude 426mt, km 24 from Rome.
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