What to See in Albano Laziale - Top Sights and Attractions

The shrine of Maria Santissima della Rotonda, formerly known as Santa Maria Maggiore, is an important Marian shrine in Lazio, located in the city of Albano Laziale, in the province of Rome, in the Castelli Romani area.

The shrine occupies an ancient round building of Roman construction dating back to the 1st century, which can be traced to Domitian's villa at Castel Gandolfo, and was formerly a nymphaeum or, according to other hypotheses, a temple. The building was converted to Christian use at the time of Constantine the Great or in the period between the 9th and 11th centuries.

Probably run in the first centuries of its existence by religious of the Byzantine rite, it was governed by Augustinian nuns from the 14th century until 1444 and was later assigned to the Girolaminian religious of the basilica of Saints Boniface and Alexius on the Aventine in Rome, who held it until 1663, when the shrine was purchased by the suburbicarian diocese of Albano for the purpose of installing the bishop's seminary there. Between 1708 and 1799, the direction of the seminary and the shrine passed to the Scolopian fathers. Since then, the shrine has been diocesan property and is attached to the parish of the cathedral basilica of San Pancrazio. Today it is listed among the protected architectural monuments of Latium.

The parish church of St. Peter the Apostle is a Catholic place of worship in Albano Laziale, a town in the suburbicarian see of Albano in the province of Rome.

The foundation of the church is very ancient, as indeed the very choice of the titular saint would testify: St. Peter in fact is said to have been, according to local tradition, the evangelizer of Albano Laziale, in the first century.

The earliest record of the church's existence goes back to the Vita Leoni papae by Anastasius Librarius, according to whom Pope Leo III had the roof of the church of St. Peter's in Albano, which was falling in place, restored.

The church bell tower is Romanesque in style and dates from the 12th century. At the back is the iuspatronatus chapel of the Savelli family, feudal lords of the place, who imposed their protection on the church from the 15th century until 1697.

This ancient church, commissioned by Pope Ormisda (514-523 AD), was carved out of a large hall belonging to the Roman baths built by the Roman emperor Caracalla.

The most important of the many restorations took place in the late Middle Ages (12th century), while in the 14th century a series of alterations were made, traces of which still remain today, such as the double-sloping ogival arch with marble corbels and columns, placed above a door on the western side of the church.

The Savelli family, in 1440, took possession of the church. In the chapel, now destroyed, they buried some of their family members there.

The princely tombs are now visible in the interior of the church; marble entablatures from the Severan period are also preserved here, transformed into altars or balustrades.

Some of the walls still retain frescoes, such as the one placed in a niche of the Virgin of the Sign from the Byzantine period and the larger one depicting St. Margaret and St. Onofrio, which can be dated roughly between the 13th and 14th centuries.

The large 16th-century altarpiece depicts the handing over of the keys to St. Peter. Eighteenth-century banners are also present.

On the eastern exterior side of the church, two marble friezes from the Roman imperial period are reused as portal jambs.

St. Paul's Church, elevated since 1999 to the Shrine of St. Gaspar del Bufalo, is a Catholic place of worship in Albano Laziale, in the province of Rome in the Suburbicarian See of Albano.

The church houses the relics of St. Gaspar del Bufalo, founder of the Congregation of the Missionaries of the Precious Blood venerated by many faithful, making this shrine one of the main pilgrimage centers in Latium and Italy.

Adjacent to the church is the majestic College of the Precious Blood where, in an atmosphere of silence and serenity young laymen are preparing to spend a year of discernment before entering the major seminary of missionaries. Next to this large complex are also the ancient Roman Cisternoni, a large Roman cistern measuring about 30 x 50 meters that is one of the symbols of the town.

The two structures were built around the year 1282, in their own grounds, by Cardinal Giacomo Savelli, later to become pope under the name Honorius IV. In 1710, the painter Gaspar Van Wittel, on the occasion of Pope Clement XI Albani's visit to Albano, portrayed the church and the adjoining convent in a splendid canvas (now in the Pitti Museum in Florence).

In 1769, Cardinal Marcantonio Colonna completely restored the entire complex, modifying it in part, especially in the interior of the church, where there is a rather reworked Baroque taste, while the facade denotes a 19th-century neoclassical style.

Among the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century canvases in the building, placed near the altars, the one behind the main altar stands out, depicting the anointing of St. Paul, a late seventeenth-century work by a painter belonging to the school of Pietro da Cortona. The vault of the nave is decorated with a 19th-century fresco, attributable to Gagliardi, who was very active in Albano at that time.