Alban Hills

The Alban Hills (Italian: Colli Albani) are the caldera remains of a quiescent volcanic complex in Italy, located 20 km (12 mi) southeast of Rome and about 24 km (15 mi) north of Anzio. The 950 metres (3,120 ft) high Monte Cavo forms a highly visible peak in the centre of the caldera, but the highest point is Maschio delle Faete approximately 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) to the east of Cavo and 6 metres (20 ft) taller. There are subsidiary calderas along the rim of the Alban Hills that contain the lakes Albano and Nemi. The hills are composed of peperino (lapis albanus), a variety of tuff that is useful for construction and provides a mineral-rich substrate for nearby vineyards.

Quotes

• Therefore farewell, ye hills, and ye, ye envineyarded ruins!
    Therefore farewell, ye walls, palaces, pillars, and domes!
  Therefore farewell, far seen, ye peaks of the mythic Albano,
    Seen from Montorio’s height, Tibur and Aesula’s hills!
  Ah, could we once, ere we go, could we stand, while, to ocean descending,
    Sinks o’er the yellow dark plain slowly the yellow broad sun,
  Stand, from the forest emerging at sunset, at once in the champaign,
    Open, but studded with trees, chestnuts umbrageous and old,
  E’en in those fair open fields that incurve to thy beautiful hollow,
    Nemi, imbedded in wood, Nemi, inurned in the hill!—
  Therefore farewell, ye plains, and ye hills, and the City Eternal!
    Therefore farewell! We depart, but to behold you again!
  
  • Arthur Hugh Clough, from Amours de Voyage (1849), III, xiii

Poems of Places

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places, Vol. 11: Italy, 1 (1877), pp. 49–51

• Our villa, perhaps, you never have seen;
  It lies on the slope of the Alban hill;
  Lifting its white face, sunny and still,
  Out of the olives’ pale gray green,
  That, far away as the eye can go,
  Stretch up behind it, row upon row.
  There, in the garden, the cypresses, stirred
  By the sifting winds, half musing talk,
  And the cool, fresh, constant voice is heard
  Of the fountains spilling in every walk.
  There stately the oleanders grow,
  And one long gray wall is aglow
  With golden oranges burning between
  Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green,
  And there are hedges all clipped and square,
  As carven from blocks of malachite,
  Where fountains keep spinning their threads of light,
  And statues whiten the shadow there.
  And, if the sun too fiercely shine,
  And one would creep from its noonday glare,
  There are galleries dark, where ilexes twine
  Their branchy roofs above the head.
  Or when at twilight the heats decline,
  If one but cross the terraces,
  And lean o’er the marble balustrade,
  Between the vases whose aloes high
  Show their sharp pike-heads against the sky,
  What a sight—Madonna mia—he sees!
  There stretches our great campagna beneath,
  And seems to breathe a rosy breath
  Of light and mist, as in peace it sleeps,—
  And summery thunder-clouds of rain,
  With their slanting spears, rim over the plain,
  And rush at the ruins, or, routed, fly
  To the mountains that lift their barriers high,
  And stand with their purple pits of shades
  Split by the sharp-edged limestone blades,
  With opaline lights and tender grades
  Of color, that flicker and swoon and die,
  Built up like a wall against the sky.
  • William Wetmore Story, "The Villa"
  • From "Castle Palo", in Poems (1856), pp. 5–7

• The sacred Mount,
  Crowned with the citadel of Latin Jove,
  Hangs o’er Alba’s Lake, and o’er the towers
  Older than Rome, their daughter. On its slopes
  Aricia smiles, and stately Tusculum.
  Beneath us Gabii, and, in shrouded sheen,
  Regillus, famed for Tarquin’s overthrow.
  Northward leans Tibur o’er her cataract,—
  Fortress of Sabine wars. Fidenæ there,
  And farther, Veii melts into the shade.
  • John Nichol, "Monte Sacro"
  • From Hannibal: A Historical Drama (1873), IV, ii