To beat the heat, popes head south to summer palace

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — A pope’s thoughts are supposed to run toward heaven, but summer temperatures in Rome typically evoke a different destination. So when the heat rises, the leader of the Catholic Church heads for the hills — and the Vatican’s equivalent of Camp David. Unlike the secluded presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains, […]

(RNS2-JUNE22) Castel Gandolfo, located 15 miles south of Rome, has been a papal summer retreat since 1624. The tourist town overlooks a volcanic crater lake. For use with RNS-POPE-SUMMER, transmitted June 22, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Francis X. Rocca.

(RNS2-JUNE22) Castel Gandolfo, located 15 miles south of Rome, has been a papal summer retreat since 1624. The tourist town overlooks a volcanic crater lake. For use with RNS-POPE-SUMMER, transmitted June 22, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Francis X. Rocca.

(RNS2-JUNE22) Castel Gandolfo, located 15 miles south of Rome, has been a papal summer retreat since 1624. The tourist town overlooks a volcanic crater lake. For use with RNS-POPE-SUMMER, transmitted June 22, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Francis X. Rocca.

(RNS2-JUNE22) Castel Gandolfo, located 15 miles south of Rome, has been a papal summer retreat since 1624. The tourist town overlooks a volcanic crater lake. For use with RNS-POPE-SUMMER, transmitted June 22, 2009. Religion News Service photo by Francis X. Rocca.

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy — A pope’s thoughts are supposed to run toward heaven, but summer temperatures in Rome typically evoke a different destination. So when the heat rises, the leader of the Catholic Church heads for the hills — and the Vatican’s equivalent of Camp David.


Unlike the secluded presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains, the papal villa at Castel Gandolfo, 15 miles southeast of Rome, sits at the very center of a small town that is also a substantial tourist attraction. And Pope Benedict XVI, like his predecessors, continues to make public appearances during his vacations here.

The papal summer palace and gardens, set on the rim of a volcanic crater lake, offer a more soothing and informal pace of life than the one the pontiff leads at the Vatican.

“Pope John Paul II had a very beautiful expression, that at Castel Gandolfo one works at rest and rests at work,” said Saverio Petrillo, director of the villa since 1986. “Obviously, the cares of the world and the church do not cease while he is here, but there is greater relaxation.”

The tradition started with Pope Urban VIII, who built the palace at Castel Gandolfo in 1624, declaring it beneath a pontiff’s dignity to rely on others’ hospitality when needing a respite from Rome.

Later in the same century, Pope Alexander VII commissioned the great Baroque architect and sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, who designed the elliptical colonnade around St. Peter’s Square in Rome, to design Castel Gandolfo’s town square and parish church.

Not all the popes since then have been equally devoted to the place. Of the 31 men who have occupied the Holy See since 1624, Petrillo notes, only 15 have frequented Castel Gandolfo. Pope Innocent XII (1691-1700) was so annoyed by rain and fog on his first night that he left the next day and never returned.


With the addition in 1929 of the nearby Villa Barberini (a grant from the Italian government in partial compensation for the loss of the Papal States six decades earlier), the grounds reached their present form.

All 136 acres — an area 20 percent larger than Vatican City itself — enjoy “extraterritorial” status, like that of a foreign embassy, under Italian law. About 60 of these acres are farmland, producing milk, olive oil and fruit for the villa and Vatican City.

A discreet overpass connects the papal palace to 74 acres of elegantly terraced gardens, once part of the great villa of the Roman Emperor Domitian (81-96 A.D.). Strolling amid the cypress trees and topiary labyrinths, the pope and his guests can, on a clear day, glimpse the Tyrrhenian Sea a dozen miles to the west.

Until the 1980s, the pope could also gaze at the stars from the Vatican Observatory, whose two telescope domes protrude incongruously from the baroque palace roof. The observatory’s headquarters and library are still here, though the actual observing now happens in Arizona.

Papal use of the villa peaked under Popes Pius XI (1922-39) and Pius XII (1939-58), who would come to stay for as long as six months in a row.

Out of safety concerns, Pius XII remained in Rome for the entire length of World War II. Following the Allied landings at Anzio in January 1944, the villa served its most unusual function, as a shelter for thousands of refugees. Pius’ bedroom was reserved for expectant women.


“About 50 babies were born in the pope’s bed,” Petrillo said, and the grateful mothers named most of them Pio or Eugenio (after Eugenio Pacelli, Pius’ original name) or their feminine equivalents.

The globetrotting John Paul II transformed the use of the villa, visiting for short periods throughout the year, often after one of his overseas trips, or to work intensively on important documents or speeches.

John Paul also started the practice, continued by his successor Benedict, of retreating to various locations in northern Italy for part of every summer.

“Those are the real vacations,” said the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, deputy director of the Vatican press office. “The pace is slower at Castel Gandolfo than in Rome, but it is still a papal residence.”

(Benedict will spend the second half of July this year in the northwestern Italian region of Val d’Aosta, before moving to Castel Gandolfo for the rest of the summer.)

While at Castel Gandolfo, Benedict publicly recites the Angelus prayer on Sundays, and holds weekly public audiences on some Wednesday mornings, when the courtyard of the palace and the town square fill up with as many as 5,000 pilgrims. To accommodate bigger crowds, the pope flies by helicopter to Rome to receive the faithful in St. Peter’s Square.


Benedict nonetheless enjoys enough leisure at the villa to pursue his most beloved pastime: the piano.

“We are able to hear, usually in the evening, sonatas by Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, performed by the pope,” Petrillo told the official Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano last year. “And it is something that fills us with joy because it means that Benedict XVI feels truly at home.”

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!