Rocca di Papa, viaggio nel cuore dei Castelli Romani

At the foot of the mountain lie the Fields of Hannibal, the territory where the commander camped, which still bears his name today.
Rocca di Papa, which during the time of the Latin League was called Cabum, instead owes its name to Pope Eugene III (1145-1152), who stayed here in exile from Rome, while the town was mentioned for the first time in 1181, on the occasion of the occupation by Pope Lucius III, who incorporated the town into the possessions of the Church.
Rocca di Papa hosts the headquarters of the Roman Castles park, which surrounds the city with lush woods, providing it with suggestive views, which can be admired from the top of the Rocca, among the climbing of narrow alleys and ancient buildings where time seems to have stopped.
A setting that lent itself well to some scenes of the film The Marquis of Grillo with Alberto Sordi, which were shot here. Among the points of interest is the church of Santa Maria ad Nives of Palazzolo, a place of worship perched over Lake Albano, near which the Sacred Way passed, leading from the Appian Way to the temple and near which there is an ancient tomb believed to belong to the Cornelii Scipiones.
Curiously, from the shape of some bas-reliefs found on this unsuspecting tomb, the symbol of the fasces, used in the Fascist era, is said to have originated. On the ground above, the “cardinal’s villa” was built in 1629, at the behest of Cardinal Girolamo Colonna, now a residence used as a ceremonies and congress center.
The pontifical fortress located at the highest point of the town was the scene of Guglielmo Marconi’s experiments and today houses the city’s geophysics museum, where one of the first seismological observatories in Italy is still active today.
Among the curiosities of the territory is the physical phenomenon of a stretch of road that appears to be uphill but is actually downhill, located outside the town center, in the stretch of the Via dei Laghi between Ariccia and Rocca di Papa, where curious visitors and scholars go to see the phenomenon with their own eyes.
Among the gastronomic specialties, the proximity of the woods naturally inspired many dishes based on porcini mushrooms and chestnuts, to which the town dedicates a festival every October.