Summary
NEMI – THE ALBAN LAKE AND TUNNEL.
Nemi, that is, the Arician grove, and the Alban hill, come within the tour commonly made by travellers; and a description, in the usual style, will be found in all the common guide-books. No one should omit to visit the two lakes. The tunnel, or emissary, cut nearly two miles through the mountain, from the Alban lake, is the most extraordinary memorial of Roman perseverance to be found in the world. An English miner would be at a loss to account for such a perforation made without shafts. It has served to carry off the redundant water from the time of the Veian war, 398 years before Christ, to this day, nor has received, nor is in want of, repairs.
DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT TOMBS IN THE ALBAN HILL.
When the traveller has wandered amongst the ruins of villas and tombs, to all of which great names are given, he may examine the productions of a discovery, which has been lately made, and which, if there be no deception, has brought to light a society possessed, apparently, of all the arts of ancient civilization, and existing before the arrival of Æneas in Italy—a society which was buried in the convulsion that changed the volcano of Albano into a lake.
Doctor Alexander Visconti has enabled us to judge of this prodigious discovery by publishing a memoir on the subject, and the reader may like to see the fact stated plainly, and divested of the solemn whimsical pedantry of the antiquary, and of the legal involution of the attached affidavits.
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- ItalyRemarks Made in Several Visits, from the Year 1816 to 1854, pp. 195 - 222Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1859