Leo XIV will be the sixteent

The imposing pontifical villa of Castel Gandolfo, a fortified palace of the seventeenth century on the shores of Lake Albano, will house since this afternoon, after twelve years empty, to a guest of honor.

Pope Leo XIV will arrive around 5:00 p.m. (local time) to this Pontifical summer complex – located about 40 km from the center of the Italian capital – where he will remain until July 20. Then he will return from August 15 to 17.

It will thus become the sixteenth Pope who resides in Castel Gandolfo. Although unlike its predecessors, the Pontiff will not stay in the Apostolic Palace, but in Villa Barberini: one of the three villas that make up the complex (the papal palace, the Barberini Villa and another for administration) in which, in total, some 50 people work, many of whom live in the enclosure with their families.

The Holy Father has already visited this place – which has been traditionally chosen as a summer residence by the Pontiffs since the mid -16th century- Twice: May 29, when Burgo Laudato visited yes’ and the Apostolic Palace, and on July 3, when he returned to examine the state of the works of Villa Barberini, which, with his units and gardens, will be reserved for his stay.

Therefore, as reported Vatican News, he Antiquarium, Located on the ground floor of the building, it will remain closed to the public. This space, which retains valuable archaeological findings discovered in this area between 1841 and 1931, was included so far in the museum spaces that decided to open Pope Francis in 2016 after his decision to remain in summer in the Vatican. The Argentine Pope visited Castel Gandolfo three times, but never stayed there.

However, he was not the only Pope to make this decision. The Pontifical Villa was inaugurated in the early seventeenth century by Pope Urban VIII, belonging to the Barberini lineage. On May 10, 1626 he spent his first night in Castel Gandolfo. But of the 31 pontiffs that happened, 15 resigned to spend a season out of the Vatican.

Innocent X was the first on this list. In its four centuries, this palace was uninhabited between 1870 and 1929. Those six decades of abandonment arose with the end of the Pontifical State and concluded when the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini acknowledged the Holy See as its legitimate owner with the signature of the Lateran Treaty.

Pío XI spent in Castel Gandolfo six months a year

Pío XI, chosen Pope in February 1922, succumbed immediately to the palatial luxury of this town, perfect to counteract the suffocating heat of Rome. He liked it so much that he spent there six months a year.

Among the private rooms that the public can visit for 9 years, as part of the museum that Pope Francis opened, is the bedroom in which Pius XII and San Pablo VI died.

The grandfather of the first founded The Roman observer, The Official Gazette of the Vatican, and, in general, the whole family enjoyed a fruitful banking and cultural relationship with the Holy See. San Pablo VI was elected Pope in 1963 and was canonized in 2018 with the archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Arnulfo Romero, killed in 1980 by the death squads while celebrating Mass.

In the Pope’s bed 50 children were born between January and June 1944

Castel Gandolfo contains other curiosities. In that same room where two popes perished, Benedict XVI spent the night that renounced the pontificate. There were also more than 40 children between January and June 1944. In those black months of World War II, Pius XII, Eugenio Pacelli, converted the Pontifical Villa into a shelter for more than 12,000 displaced people fleeing from the bombings.

The Italian families were so grateful if they could protect the bombings that baptized some of the newborns like Eugenio or Pío, in honor of the then Pontiff.

The entrance of the Castel Gandolfo Museum can be acquired on the Vatican Museums website. With it you have access to the splendid gallery of the first floor, which contains portraits of all the potatoes from the sixteenth and to the present, or the rooms of the second floor, where the daily life of the pontiffs passed.

You can also visit the Private Library, which witnessed the moment in which Benedict XVI delivered to Pope Francis, as successor, a white box with the documentation on the illnesses of the Church.

Tourists can also curly the private chapel, the Swiss Hall – where the soldiers were monitored – the Consistory room – where meetings of the Cardinal College took place when the Pope was there – or the throne room.

The infinite gardens of Castel Gandolfo, which occupy 55 hectares of land – 11 more than the entire Vatican territory – were projected by the Italian artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. It is a bucolic landscape that also has a livestock exploitation, with cows that are obtained daily about 600 liters of milk, and a farm. In that space is also the Burgus Laudato if ‘opened in February 2023, which is intended for educational and social integral training activities.