Almone
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Almone Almo |
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 The Almone in the Parco della Caffarella |
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| Data | ||
| location | Italy | |
| source |
Albano Laziale , ( Alban Hills ) 41 ° 43 ′ 42 ″ N , 12 ° 39 ′ 35 ″ E |
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| Source height | 400 m | |
| muzzle |
Tiber in Rome Coordinates: 41 ° 52 ′ 10 " N , 12 ° 28 ′ 29" E 41 ° 52 ′ 10 " N , 12 ° 28 ′ 29" E
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| Big cities | Rome | |
| Navigable | No | |
The Almone ( Latin Almo ) is a river in Italy. It emerges through infiltration from Lake Albano and flows through the southern urban area of Rome coming from the area of the Castelli Romani and essentially shapes a cultural landscape .
geology
The Almone has significantly shaped the Valle della Caffarella (Caffarella Valley), the geological formation of which goes back 80,000 to 360,000 years. It has a U-shape that is typical of a river valley. The subsoil is characterized by tuff and pozzolan layers , which are quickly exposed to erosion by water . During the Würm Ice Age, the Almone removed the volcanic material and dug a river bed around 100 m deep. Later the watercourse began to deposit sediments , the river bed filled up again and the water began to wash out bank slopes. As a result of the erosion, some caves also formed in the valley.
Cultural landscape
In ancient times and in the centuries that followed, the Almone valley was a well-tended cultural landscape. There was great diversity in terms of vegetation and arable farming / horticulture as well as building and operating monuments. In the 19th century, the valley was still used by the Romans as a destination for a summer vacation.
The intensification and uncontrolled expansion of agriculture as well as increasing fallow land, the decay of buildings and the discharge of sewage into the river let the valley deteriorate more and more. At the height of the Via Appia Antica , the course of the river was laid underground in the 1920s. The Almone flows in a collecting canal towards the Rome-South sewage treatment plant. Its original mouth of the Tiber was roughly at the same level as the current gasometer .
It was only with the establishment of the Comitato per il Parco della Caffarella, based on voluntary work, and the later establishment of the Parco della Caffarella nature reserve in the mid-1990s, that the original cultural landscape began to be restored through nature conservation requirements, renaturation and restoration.
Cultic worship
The river valley was given a lot of veneration in ancient times. At that time there were several places of worship, altars and memorials in the valley. The Almone at the gates of ancient Rome helped to supply the city with water. Therefore, on March 27th every year, a statue of the Magna Mater was carried from a temple on the Palatine in a procession to Via Ostiense to be washed in a ritual act in the waters of the Almone, where it flows into the Tiber.
On the Ides of July (July 15), the Roman knight games held in honor of the god Mars in memory of the climax of the First Latin War with the battle of Regillus lacus in 493 BC. Along the Almone.
A grove of oaks above the valley was worshiped as a sanctuary for the Roman nymph Egeria . The ruins of this cult site have been preserved to this day. Until the 19th century there was also a restaurant in the immediate vicinity.
The Almone is also mentioned in Cicero's treatise De Natura Deorum .
swell
- Statutes and history on the website of the “Comitato per il Parco della Caffarella” (partly in English / Italian), accessed on October 13, 2017
- Valley of the Caffarella, Rome at www.italyheaven.co.uk, accessed October 13, 2017
- Schmitz, Leonhard: Almo , in: Smith, William Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology , Brown and Company, Boston 1867 Smith. P. 132, some of which can be viewed online