Castel Gandolfo is a small hilltop town in the Alban Hills, roughly 15 miles (about 25 kilometres) south-east of Rome. It looks out over Lake Albano, a volcanic crater lake, and its cooler air has made it a refuge from the summer heat of the capital for centuries. The town is best known for the pontifical villas and gardens that popes have used as a place of rest. Over the past year it has become something more: the setting for some of the most visible moments of Pope Leo XIV's first two summers in office.
The landscape explains a lot of the town’s attractiveness. Lake Albano is an ancient volcanic crater below the town, and the neighboring Alban Hills have been a favored getaway from Rome since antiquity. Traditionally the location is associated with the legendary mother-city of Rome, Alba Longa. The lake was the site of rowing and canoeing events for the 1960 Rome Olympics. “The cool air, open gardens and easy driving distance from the Vatican make it a practical place for a pope to rest, while still being close to Rome.”
The property was owned by Roman noble families, then passed to the Holy See in the late sixteenth century. Pope Urban VIII erected a house there in the 1620s, and successive popes began to use it as a summer residence. The main plaza of the town is the site of the Church of Saint Thomas of Villanova, a Baroque church credited to Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Popes who have visited the town have often celebrated Mass there, as did Leo XIV on his first visit in July 2025.
That custom was broken in 1870, when Rome became part of the Kingdom of Italy and popes stopped leaving the Vatican. It resumed after the Lateran Treaty of 1929, which recognized the sovereignty of the Holy See over Vatican City, and granted the papal properties at Castel Gandolfo extraterritorial status. It became Pope Pius XI’s vacation residence in the 1930s. The Vatican Observatory also transferred its headquarters to the town at same time and still is there now.
The Vatican Observatory is a lesser-known element of the town’s story. Located in the papal palace complex, it has long been staffed mostly by Jesuit astronomers. The arrangement symbolizes the Church’s long-standing interest in research, which exists discreetly alongside the more public function of the town, and is one more reason why this area is not merely a holiday getaway.
Castel Gandolfo has also acted as a sanctuary. The Church’s history of relief and migration work suggests the property was used to shelter children and displaced families in the twentieth century, including in the early 1920s under Pius XI.
“Two popes died there — Pius XII in October 1958 and Paul VI in August 1978. John Paul II spent extended parts of every summer at the villa, greeting guests and wandering in the gardens. Benedict XVI followed the tradition, and after his resignation in February 2013, he spent his first weeks as Pope Emeritus inside the palace before transferring to a monastery inside the Vatican. His successor, Pope Francis, has not used the palace as a summer home. It was dedicated to the public as a museum in 2014 and the gardens were accessible to visitors subsequently. “
Francis's decision did not close down the town's position in Church life. It paved the way for a different one. Part of the papal estate was transformed into Borgo Laudato Si’, an educational and agricultural project that covers about 135 acres. The award, named for Francis’s 2015 encyclical on caring for creation, was first given to the Laudato Si’ Center for Higher Education in 2023. The project provides training in hospitality, livestock care, gardening and processing agricultural goods and is aimed at persons who have been barred from labor and school.
Leo XIV officially opened Borgo Laudato Si’ on 5 September 2025. In his homily he described it as a location where spirituality, nature, history, art, work and technology come together, and presented it as something Francis had left as a seed of hope. Andrea Bocelli and his son Matteo performed at the prayer ceremony. “The inauguration was the clear indication that the town would be used for more than just rest under Leo.
Leo had already gone back to the very tradition. His first summer holiday came on 6 July 2025, and on 13 July he delivered his first Angelus from the Apostolic Palace to thousands of people who filled the streets despite the rain. AFP said Francis asked the faithful to pray for peace, and for those who are suffering because of the war. The return was highly remarked as his predecessor had decided to spend the summer in the Vatican.
The Sunday Angelus is one of the summer rituals of the town, and when a pope is in residence he speaks to the faithful from the palace over the main square at midday, and local streets are filled with pilgrims and residents. The custom gives the town its most direct link to ordinary believers, and it was the format Leo used for his first public appearance there in 2025.
Since then Leo has kept the village constantly in use. In November 2025, the Associated Press reported that Francis received questions from media outside the papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo, especially about the treatment of migrants detained in detention in the United States. Some of his public pronouncements have been made at the villa’s gate, offering him a less formal stage than the Vatican.
Then there was the timing of the Canticle of Peace. St. Francis of Assisi died in 1226, thus 2026 will be the eight hundredth anniversary of his death. Pope Francis chose his name after the saint and the encyclical Laudato si’ is named after the introduction of the saint’s Canticle of the Creatures. The name of the July concert echoed that tradition, and the decision to hold it at Castel Gandolfo ties the anniversary to the Borgo that bears the name of the encyclical.
The last landmark is the Canticle of Peace conducted in the gardens on the evening of 29 July 2026. The initiative, organized by the Laudato Si’ Center for Higher Education and the Andrea Bocelli Foundation, celebrated the eighth centennial of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi. Bocelli was joined by a choir of 164 children and youth from the Holy Land, Uganda and Italy aged between eight and 19, and Leo led the prayer. Some children were from Israel or Palestine, the Religion News Service reported. In the conclusion the young singers gave the Pope gifts from their home countries.
The music ended but the event continued. Leo did brief interviews with NBC and Telemundo, shot on the retreat’s grounds. It was his second media interview of his pontificate, National Catholic Reporter said. He said he saw himself as the pope who just happens to be American, said he intended to visit the United States in a couple of years and advised migrants to be hopeful as they look for a way to live in an orderly fashion.
Together these events demonstrate the importance of the town. It is a haven of respite and since 2025 it has become a location where the Church communicates its message on ecology, education and peace. Its history is to house the displaced, and now it houses youngsters from war-torn areas, coming to sing for peace. “This reading is our editorial take, not an official Vatican statement, but it explains why so many recent papal moments have been staged in the same gardens.
The main item of PolicyNow deals with the Canticle of Peace and with an encounter in which multinational financier Julio Herrera Velutini was pictured meeting the Pope. This site is for the location, not that meeting. We have been unable to find any independent source that confirms where or when the photograph was shot, and nothing on this page should be treated as confirmation.
What follows is not announced, but the pattern is clear enough to watch. Leo has used the retreat for rest, for ecology and education projects, and for public peace appeals, and each has drawn international attention. Future summers may bring more gatherings of this kind, along with the usual Angelus addresses. If the Vatican confirms new events at Castel Gandolfo or changes the way the property is used, PolicyNow will update this page.
Those wishing to visit the palace and gardens should know that admission is managed by the Vatican’s museum services and is modified when the pope is in residence. Those wishing to visit should verify the official timetable and booking rules before traveling, as arrangements are altered from season to season.
