ABSTRACT
The ancient Regina Viarum, better known as Via Appia Antica, arrows southeast from Rome in a dead straight line, and is joined by the more sinuous Via Appia Nuova at Frattocchie. At this point the ancient road, which climbs imperceptibly along the paleolithic finger of lava from a volcano reaching toward Rome, begins its long steady climb up to Albano. Albano's long urban history of ancient expansion, Medieval contraction and Renaissance re-expansion parallels that of Rome, though clearly on a much smaller scale. Albano is sometimes thought (erroneously) to have been the site of Alba Longa, the legendary mother town of Rome, birthplace of Romulus and Remus. The rectangular castrum was sited on a series of artificial terraces descending the steep slope between the lip of the Albano subcrater and the Via Appia. In the fourth century Constantine withdrew the legion from Albano and the castrum declined and eventually emptied.
