Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the CampagnaBurn, Robert
History
Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna
Burn, Robert
Rome (Italy) -- Antiquities; Rome (Italy) -- Description and travel
The explorations carried out in 1876 seem to have proved that the
buildings consecrated to Jupiter Latiaris on Monte Cavo were a walled area
of about sixty-five yards long, and fifty wide, a fragment of the wall of
which was found; a chapel dedicated to Jupiter, one corner of which was
excavated; a large altar, and some other chapels dedicated as votive
offerings. A tracing of the shape and position of the area, chapels and
altar was found by M. S. De Rossi in a seventeenth century MS. in the
Barberini Library, and was published in the Annali dell’ Instituto for
1876. This traced sketch agrees with the excavations. (See Plan.)
[Sidenote: Alba Longa.]
The early destruction of Alba Longa, so famous in Roman legendary lore,
has completely deprived us of the means of tracing its site by the
discovery of any remains of the walls or buildings which it contained. It
was razed to the ground by Tullus Hostilius in B.C. 667 and never rebuilt.
Dionysius thus describes the site: “The city was built close to the
mountain and lake, upon a site between the two. They serve as defences to
it, and make it almost impregnable, for the mountain is very steep and
lofty and the lake deep and wide.” Livy says that the city was named Longa
because it extended along a ridge of the Alban hills. The words of
Dionysius seem to imply that Alba stood immediately between Monte Cavo and
the lake on the site of the convent of Palazzuolo, and Cav. Rosa, the
highest modern authority on the topography of the Campagna, who has made
the neighbourhood of Albano and Nemi the subject of special study, holds
this opinion. Nibby thought that the whole edge of the crater from
Palazzuolo nearly to Marino, a distance of more than two miles, was
occupied by the city of Alba. Sir William Gell discovered an ancient road
running along the edge of the crater above Monte Cuccu, and a few blocks
of stone on the top of the precipice bordering the lake further eastwards,
which he thought must have belonged to the gate of Alba.
At the sixteenth milestone on the Appian road beyond Albano, in the valley
below the modern town of Ariccia, is the massive causeway 700 feet in
length and 40 in width, upon which the old Appian road was raised. It is
built of blocks of peperino and is a solid mass of masonry, except where
three archways give passage to the water which descends from the Alban
hills and the neighbourhood of Nemi.
[Sidenote: Lake of Nemi.]
Beyond the ancient viaduct we come to the tunnel through which the lake of
Nemi discharges its waters.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Old Rome: A Handbook to the Ruins of the City and the Campagna — John Shaqi
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