Nemi, Lake

Abstract

Lake Nemi is located in a volcanic crater of the Alban Hills about 25 km southeast of Rome.

Exploring the sanctuary of Venus and its sacred grove: politics, cult and identity in Roman Pompeii

“…Too little is known about other central Italian terrace sanctuaries of the second and first centuries BC to determine what planting design was followed, although it is fairly certain that their courtyards harboured gardens or groves. The terraced sanctuary of Diana at Aricia above Lake Nemi had a sacred grove, and Roman mythology and legend has Aeneas and the Rex Nemorensis plucking the 'golden bough' from a tree in it (Strabo, Geography 5.3.12, 5.1.2; Virgil, Aeneid 6.124-211; Suetonius, Caligula 35; Pausanias, Guide to Greece 2.27A; Coarelli, 1987b: 165-85;Ampolo, 1993: 161-3;Ghini, 1993;Guldager Bilde and Moltesen, 1997;Ghim, 2000;Guldager Bilde and Moltesen, 2002). At the sanctuary of Hercules Victor in Tivoli, a deposit of loam and planting pits in the precinct point to sanctuary landscaping (Coarelli, 1987b: 89).…”