Lake Albano

This is the largest body of water in the Castelli Romani, almost an aquatic dependency of the capital between banks that overhang in several places. The remnants of antiquity are not to be missed: coming down from Castel Gandolfo along Via Gramsci you will find the so-called Doric Nymphaeum that dates back to the Republican age, while on the banks is the Bergantino Nymphaeum, otherwise known as Baths of Diana, both hollowed out of the ground and originally part of a Domitian villa.

The lake has an artificial outflow, a grandiose work of Roman engineering that, according to tradition, was built in a single year, between 398 and 397 B.C., to fulfil a prediction of Rome's victory over Etruscan Veio on the condition that the waters of the lake joined those of the sea. The canal is underground, beginning from a manoeuvring chamber made of peperino blocks, it is almost a couple of kilometres long and passes far below the rim of the crater.

You can walk the entire circumnavigation of the stretch of water for a total length of about ten kilometres, partly on an asphalted road and partly along a forest path that the Italian Alpine Club indicates with the number 510.