The Papal Palace at Castel Gandolfo, from the square to the bedroom

Most people searching for the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo want to know two things, whether they can get in and what’s actually there. You can, for €12, and there’s far more inside than an empty summer house. There’s a bedroom where forty babies were born in 1944, a Raphael-designed hanging that arrived in August 2026 and a gallery with every pope since 1500. Here’s what I’d look at and in what order, because the standard ticket comes without a guide and it’s easy to walk through the rooms none the wiser. The town, the villas and the other visits are all in my Castel Gandolfo guide.

A Gandolfi fortress that Urban VIII made papal

The building began as a stronghold of the Gandolfi family, who gave the town its name, and later passed to the Savelli. One of them, Cardinal Giacomo Savelli, became Pope Honorius IV in 1285. Centuries on, the Apostolic Chamber took the property over the family’s debts, and Urban VIII turned it into a papal residence. He arrived in May 1626 and, according to the Papal Villas, it was he who decided that popes should spend their summers at the castle.

What you see from Piazza della Libertà is the work of several hands. Carlo Maderno built the wing facing the lake and the left side of the front for Urban VIII, and Alexander VII finished the façade on the square and the wing facing the sea, with a gallery designed with Bernini. The coat of arms above the rusticated doorway is his. Across the square, the church of San Tommaso da Villanova is also by Bernini, so on one small piazza the great Roman baroque architect turns up twice.

The private apartment, where I’d go first

The ticket includes the private apartment, the rooms where popes spent their summers and received kings and heads of state. For me this is what makes the visit worthwhile, and it isn’t the grandeur. It’s what happened here in 1944. With the Allies advancing and the Alban Hills turned into a battlefield, Pius XII opened the palace to local people seeking shelter, and forty babies were born in his own bed. Everyone called them the Pope’s children.

The permanent exhibition “Castel Gandolfo 1944”, put together with the Vatican Apostolic Archive, fills in the rest. From 25 January 1944 thousands of displaced people camped out in the extraterritorial estate, in halls, under staircases and even among the Roman ruins, and on 10 February an Allied raid hit the Propaganda Fide villa inside the grounds, killing more than five hundred. I’d give it proper time before moving on to the private chapel, where Benedict XVI and Francis once prayed together.

What’s on show at the Papal Palace in 2026?

Since 4 August the Hall of the Popes has displayed Saint Paul Preaching in Athens. It belongs to the Acts of the Apostles series that Leo X commissioned for the walls of the Sistine Chapel, woven in Flanders between 1515 and 1521 from cartoons by Raphael and his workshop. This particular piece vanished in the Sack of Rome in 1527 and found its way back to the pope in 1554. Seeing one of that set in a summer palace in the hills, far from the Roman queues, is to my mind the real bonus of visiting this year.

The other new arrival is temporary. Since 10 September the palace has shown Mario Deluigi’s “Litany of the Virgin”, an abstract oil painted in 1949-1950 as an altarpiece and rejected as far too modern, which Albino Luciani later gave to Paul VI in 1972. The official site gives no closing date, so I wouldn’t bank on it if your trip is months away.

On the first floor is the gallery of papal portraits, from Julius II to Francis, with vestments from each period and Palatine Guard uniforms. It’s the most museum-like section and the one I’d move through fastest.

When it opens, and when it doesn’t

The official 2026 calendar shuts the palace on Tuesdays and, crucially, while the Pope is in town. Leo XIV moved into the Apostolic Palace from 5 to 27 July, and it didn’t open at all that month. August had two blocks of closures, the 13th to the 17th and the 29th to the 31st, which line up with his return for the Assumption Mass and the lake procession. That’s my own reading of the official dates, but the rule of thumb follows. If there’s a papal event at Castel Gandolfo, don’t count on getting in.

From Monday to Friday last entry is at 13:00. I’d take the 08:21 regional train from Termini and the connecting bus up to the Papal Villas, which arrives at 09:14. The train that used to leave from the Vatican railway station isn’t on sale in 2026, so I wouldn’t count on it. How the train and bus fit together is in getting to Castel Gandolfo. And if you already have a Vatican Museums booking, the palace costs you €8, one of the savings I list in the Vatican for free or cheap.

A coffee with a view on the way out

On the ground floor there’s a café with a terrace over Lake Albano, opened in December 2024 for palace visitors, and a bookshop set up in the Chinese Room. I rarely recommend museum cafés, but this one has the finest view of the whole visit. The lake itself, with its shoreline and viewpoints, has its own page on Lake Albano. If you’ve time left, I’d head over to the Villa Barberini gardens next, which are ticketed separately and, unlike the palace, also open on Tuesdays.

On top of the palace are the domes of the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo.