Villa Barberini, a papal garden on top of an emperor's villa

When people ask me what’s really worth it at Castel Gandolfo, my answer isn’t the palace. It’s these gardens. Villa Barberini is the largest part of the Papal Villas, it sits on top of a Roman emperor’s country retreat, and you tour it in an electric minibus that winds past flowerbeds, fountains and ruins with views out towards the sea. Here’s what it actually is, how you visit and how it differs from what the palace ticket gets you, since that’s where most people go wrong.

Villa Barberini isn’t the palace’s Secret Garden

A Papal Palace ticket includes a garden, the Secret Garden, and plenty of visitors assume that means they’ve seen the gardens of Castel Gandolfo. They haven’t. Villa Barberini is a separate estate with its own gate on Via Massimo D’Azeglio and its own ticket. It’s now run by Borgo Laudato Si’, a Holy See project that grew out of Francis’s encyclical and that Leo XIV formally opened in 2025. By its own figures the estate covers 55 extraterritorial hectares, 35 of them gardens and 20 of farm, orchards and greenhouses, with over 4,000 plants from 300 species.

One more thing worth knowing, because it changes the shape of your day. The palace is shut every Tuesday, but the Borgo isn’t. It opens from 9:00 to 14:00, so a Tuesday at Castel Gandolfo needn’t be wasted.

From a monsignor’s house to the popes’ garden

The name is slightly misleading. The villa began as an unfinished house for Monsignor Scipione Visconti, designed by the Lombard architect Giacomo Mola, and the Visconti serpent still appears in the stucco of a ground-floor room. After Visconti died in 1630, Urban VIII’s nephew Taddeo Barberini bought it in 1631, enlarged it and laid out the first garden, with olives, fruit trees, laurels, cypresses and holm oaks. Three centuries later the 1929 Lateran Pacts handed it to the Holy See, and that’s when the gardens you see today were planted, including the Belvedere gardens.

What lies underneath is what makes it special. The Papal Villas describe Domitian’s villa, home of the emperor who ruled from 81 to 96, as a residence of about 14 km² that stepped down towards the sea in three great terraces. The middle one held the imperial palace and a theatre, and the lowest the cryptoporticus, the emperor’s covered walkway, originally some 300 metres long. The director of the Papal Villas lists the most important visible remains as the theatre, the cryptoporticus, the avenue of nymphaea and an equestrian statue of Septimius Severus, and admits most of the site is still buried.

How do you visit the Villa Barberini gardens?

Two options are on sale at the Vatican Museums’ official ticket office. The one I’d pick is the electric minibus, €15 full price and €10 reduced, with an audio guide in English and around 50 minutes among the gardens, fountains and ruins. Bookings are capped at 16 people. The alternative is a guided walk with Borgo staff, €10 or €5 reduced, lasting about 90 minutes and covering 3 km in total, with some moderate uphill stretches. Children up to 5 go free on both.

You meet at the Borgo entrance 20 minutes beforehand. For groups the Borgo also lists a six-seat electric golf buggy with an authorised guide and a tour along the original Roman paving, but neither has a published price and both are booked by form. If you’re weighing up which paid extras genuinely earn their keep, I compare this one with others in exclusive Vatican experiences.

Wheelchairs and opening hours

This is where it pays to ask first. The ticket office says neither visit can take wheelchairs, while the Vatican Museums’ accessibility page mentions an electric shuttle that can carry one. I’d email the Castel Gandolfo museum office before booking, and the Vatican by wheelchair covers what is confirmed.

The 2026 hours are generous. Monday to Friday, Tuesdays aside, from 10:00 to 16:00, and until 18:00 at weekends. The closures left this year are 2 November and 25 and 26 December. The Borgo warns that July and August can change, and not by chance, since both its summer closures fell on days Leo XIV held events in the gardens.

Palace, lunch, then gardens

My order would be the palace at opening, lunch in town and the gardens saved for the afternoon, when the light is lower over the cypresses. On a Sunday the bus from the station up to the villas doesn’t run and you’ll need to walk, which I explain in getting to Castel Gandolfo. And if your trip only has room for one papal garden, bear in mind that the Vatican Gardens are right in the city, while these take you out into the countryside and the hills.