✍️ The 40-Minute Problem

Romans overlook the hill towns in their back yard. That’s good news for everyone else

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Rome, with the Castelli Romani visible on the distant Alban Hills (EJL photo)

To first-time visitors, the towns of the Castelli Romani feel like a private discovery: Rome spread out in the distance like a stage set, St. Peter’s dome recognizable through the haze, volcanic lakes that remain cool even in August, inexpensive easy-to-drink wines, Renaissance villas, even the pope’s summer palace.

But for many Romans, the Castelli Romani feel like a return to adolescence.

For them, they can recall fidgeting at weddings, long lunches with friends of their parents, their first hangover, or awkward sexual fumbling in the back of a borrowed Fiat. So, as adults, they’re more likely to book a trip to the Dolomites or Sardinia than to the Alban Hills, less than 20 kilometers from Rome’s city limits.

The Castelli Romani twinkling over Rome at night (Leonardo Di Manici/Upsplash)

There’s a Lombard phrase I learned while in Milan for the Olympics earlier this year: La tròppa confidenza la fa perd la riverenza -- “Too much familiarity makes you lose respect.” I heard it in connection with a restaurant I thought should be better known. But the phrase could just as easily apply to Romans’ attitude toward the familiar hills in their backyard.