Italy has an extraordinary amount of antiquities that are simply abandoned; no ticket office, no maintenance, no security, just overgrown. Sometimes I come across a place purely by chance, sometimes I have been tipped off by a local, sometimes because I have read about it and have made a search. I will endeavour to post articles about a wide variety of places, some very humble, others so noteworthy one wonders how they could possible have fallen into virtual oblivion.
All have in common that they have fallen out of sight and consequently out of mind. The Alban Hills national park, although nowadays practically a Roman suburb, is an area of wild natural beauty, deep crater lakes, forests, Renaissance villas and ancient ruins.
Ten years ago my daughter was born in Genzano above Lake Nemi, and the evening before her birth I sat amongst the perfumed yellow broom watching the sun set a hundred metres or so above the ruins of the Temple dedicated to Diana, goddess of the hunt, but also child birth. The event that Turner depicts relates how Aeneas breaks the golden bough in order to guide him into Hades to find his Father. Nemi is a place that almost overpowers one with atavistic emotion.
The first chapter of which opens thus:. No one who has seen that calm water, lapped in a green hollow of the Alban hills, can ever forget it. The two characteristic Italian villages which slumber on its banks, and the equally Italian palace whose terraced gardens descend steeply to the lake, hardly break the stillness and even the solitariness of the scene.
Diana herself might still linger by this lonely shore, still haunt these woodlands wild. Sadly this is not the case. Nemi castle on the hill overlooking the temples ruins. The site is not indicated, the path overgrown and the entrance gate broken open. The information boards so faded as to be illegible. I hope others will find this site and visit the ruins of my devotees.
