Lake Nemi: Caligula’s Ships and Wild Strawberries
Lake Nemi — the smaller of the two volcanic crater lakes of the Castelli Romani, twenty-eight kilometres south of Rome — has been called the Mirror of Diana since the Augustan poets. The lake is a perfect circle, four hundred metres deep at its centre, ringed by holm-oak forest, and overlooked by the medieval village of Nemi at its rim. Two things make Nemi unforgettable for a Roman day-trip: the wild strawberries that grow along its forest banks (the celebrated fragoline di Nemi), and the partially recovered hulls of the two great pleasure-ships of the emperor Caligula, which lay at the bottom of the lake from the year 41 CE until 1929. The combination of imperial archaeology and a strawberry festival in a single morning is, in our experience, one of the most charming of Rome’s day-trips.
The Sagra delle Fragole — first Sunday of June
The Sagra delle Fragole, the strawberry festival of Nemi, is held on the first Sunday of June. The village is decorated with strawberry-themed flowers, the town’s women in traditional costume distribute small baskets of fragoline to visitors, the village band plays in the piazza, and the bakers and pastry shops produce a complete strawberry menu — tarts, custards, a strawberry-and-Frascati granita. The festival is a small, sincere village event of the kind that has almost disappeared in modern Italy; our private guests are placed at a reserved table in the piazza for the central morning of the festival.
The Museo delle Navi Romane — Caligula’s ships, partially restored
The two great ships of Caligula were built between 37 and 41 CE as floating temples of Diana, the lake’s tutelary goddess. They were 71 metres and 73 metres long; they carried marble revetments, mosaic floors, bronze figureheads, lead-lined cisterns, and a small private cult complex on the upper deck. After Caligula’s assassination in 41 CE the ships were scuttled — sunk deliberately to remove them from imperial inventory — and lay on the lake bed for nineteen centuries. Mussolini, in 1929, drained the lake to recover them; the hulls were brought ashore largely intact and displayed in a purpose-built museum on the shore. In 1944 the museum and the hulls were burnt by retreating German soldiers; the surviving fragments — anchors, bronze figureheads, lead pipes, a single great rudder — are now displayed in the rebuilt Museo delle Navi Romane. The visit is half an hour; the imaginative power, larger.
Lunch at the lakeside
The natural lunch is at the Ristorante La Sirena del Lago — a 1920 establishment directly above the lake, family-owned and family-staffed — where the menu is a Castelli-style lake one: fettuccine with porcini, fritto misto di lago (small lake-fish fried in olive oil), abbacchio Roman lamb, the family Frascati Superiore. The terrace overlooks the lake at its narrowest point. Lunch is two hours.
How a private day arranges itself
The day begins at 10:00 from Rome by chauffeured car (forty-five minutes). The Museo delle Navi Romane is the morning visit (60 minutes); a slow walk through the medieval village of Nemi (45 minutes); lunch at La Sirena (two hours); a strawberry tasting at the village pastry shop Mendicini (the family bakers since 1881); a slow descent to the lake shore for the panorama; return to Rome at 17:30. The day is, deliberately, not packed — Nemi rewards slowness. For travellers who would prefer to combine Nemi with a second Castelli element, see our Castel Gandolfo day or Frascati noble villas day.
The Diana cult, in the forest
The shore of Lake Nemi was the site of the sanctuary of Diana Nemorensis — Diana of the Wood — and the sacred grove from which Sir James Frazer drew the title of his book The Golden Bough. The sanctuary’s foundations, partially excavated, lie on the eastern shore; the cult of the priest-king Rex Nemorensis (who, by tradition, defended the grove until killed by his successor) is one of the strangest survivals of Roman imperial religion. The shore can be reached by car; we sometimes propose a short afternoon visit. The grove, in summer, is the coolest stretch of the Castelli.
Season and booking
The Nemi day operates year-round. The Sagra delle Fragole is the first Sunday of June; we book the village table six weeks in advance. The strawberries themselves are at their peak from mid-May to mid-July; outside this window, the lakeside fish and the Castelli wines remain the centrepieces.
To plan a private day at Lake Nemi, contact Olga via Telegram.
