Castel Gandolfo was a separate chapter in the life of John Paul II. He called this place – Vatican number two. Like air, he needed contact with nature, walks in the shade of trees, a view of the lake from the windows of his studio, where he worked, wrote, prayed, created poetry. It was there, in a summer residence on the hills called Colli Albani, thirty kilometers in a straight line from Rome, that the stanzas of the Roman Triptych were created, where John Paul II received American President George Bush with his family in a memorable private audience and showed him the beauty of the area in a one-on-one conversation on the palace terrace. Over there time flowed differently and was governed by its’ own laws. Until 1992, the Holy Father spent the entire summer in Castel Gandolfo, thus protecting himself from the Roman heat. Later, his stays in a summer residence near Rome were punctuated by two-week trips to the high Alps to Les Combes in the wonderful Aosta Valley. But there, as in other places during the summer, he set off from the summer residence on the hills and to the same place he always returned. He did not move back to the Vatican until the beginning of October.
Magdalena Wolińska-Riedi “It happened in the Vatican”
Znak Publishing House. Kraków 2020
pages: 254 – 255
