When the heat, noise and sheer frenetic scale of the metropolis become too much, find a slower pace by the shores of volcanic Lake Bracciano, whose cool blue waters have been a balm to jaded Romans for millennia. About an hour from the city, the three towns framing the lake combine the crumbling charm of rural Italy with the eclectic history of Rome. Whether you’re interested in medieval castles and Etruscan tombs or in a deckchair with an Aperol Spritz, Lake Bracciano is the perfect antidote to the bustle and bombast of the capital.

Anguillara Sabazia

This place is truly ancient. This much is obvious when you first glimpse it – a tumble of medieval houses, painted shutters gaping, scattered down the hillside like a handful of rolled dice. The town takes its name from the Roman villa that is buried somewhere beneath its erratically cobbled streets, but there is something more historic still only a few hundred yards outside the village, submerged like a dark secret in the mud of Lake Bracciano.

Five thousand years before the creation of Rome, neolithic travellers from Greece or the Arab world found their way to this spot and brought with them a seismic shift: unlike the nomadic hunter-gatherers who populated the region at the time, they farmed, kept domesticated animals and created what must at the time have been a staggeringly large settlement, unprecedented within Italy. Archaeologists in scuba gear have discovered more than 3,000 oaken posts, which wer once used to support their houses.

Yet Anguillara Sabazia wears its antiquity lightly. At dusk, swallows swoop from the rafters of the church and weave intricate patterns above the sun-warmed terracotta roofs, soundtracked by the chatter of TV sets behind windows thrown wide open. This is a functioning town, within commuting distance of Rome and yet moving at a pace of its own, its narrow alleys cluttered with village elders passing the time in folding chairs and fishermen still bringing in the freshest seafood as their ancestors did 8,000 years ago, albeit with better gear.

The symbol of Anguillara is a pair of eels, which explains the otherwise rather odd Fountain of Eels that stands at the crest of the town. Whether the eels are the result of a pun or linguistic confusion is unclear, but their presence definitely has something to do with their Italian name anguilla, which is sometimes wrongly taken to be the root of Anguillara. In fact, the town is named after the Roman villa that stood where the coast formed a right angle, or angularia.

Nonetheless, the Fountain of Eels is worth a visit, if only because it forms part of the balustrade of the village belvedere, offering a view that stretches over hot roofs and palm trees down to the cool water of the lake below and off into a haze of distant mountains. Beside the belvedere sits the high point of Anguillara, in both senses – the Collegiata di Santa Maria Assunta, a late-15th-century church that is thought to stand on the location of a temple dedicated to a Roman mystery cult.

During the warmer months, the black-sand beaches that line the lake are ideal for various water sports as well as swimming and splashing about – the nearly-but-not-quite-tame swans that patrol the surface make this a particularly novel experience. Walk along the promenade at night, however, and you’ll catch the most atmospheric view of the town. Trees and old cast-iron lampposts line the way, and if you’re heading towards the promontory you’ll see reflected lights streaming back along the lake in a glorious mismatch of colours.

While you’re in town, make sure you visit the Centro Espositivo del Neolitico, which houses some of the most interesting finds from the underwater exploration of the Neolithic village, alongside exhibits from the actual archaeological processes. The star of the show is a 40ft canoe, one of five such vessels that astonished archaeologists when they were discovered.

Where to stay in Anguillara Sabazia

B&B al Vicolo dei Pescatori is right on the waterfront, with some rooms offering gorgeous lake views. The interiors are tastefully done, with no attempt made to mask the rough stone walls and heavy beams that attest to the building’s medieval roots, but with a modern feel nonetheless. The bedrooms are light and spacious, with white curtains that catch the breeze and solidly built furniture that could have been here for generations. Friendly host Federico Martini, will give you all the advice you need.

Getting to Anguillara Sabazia

Trains leave regularly from Rome, either from Ostiense or Tiburtina stations, and take about an hour to get to Anguillara. Tickets cost €3.22. The drive takes about 50 minutes, although traffic can be changeable.

Bracciano

The steep, crooked streets of Bracciano’s historic centre are lined with a quintessentially Italian jumble of mismatched doors, some sized for giants and some seemingly for gnomes. Flowers sprout up crumbling walls while delicate wrought-iron balconies perch higgledy-piggledy like scattered pigeons pausing for breath. Overhead, the streets are strung with brightly coloured washing, hanging like Arthurian pennants from the medieval walls. Meanwhile, the Castello Orsini-Odescalchi keeps a steady watch over the town, its occasional appearance at the ends of alleyways or towering above piazzas as startling as it is welcome.

This is the largest town on the banks of the lake that shares its name; though the water is actually a rather pleasant 15-minute scramble – and perhaps a couple of scraped knees – below. Not everyone braves the climb. Despite Bracciano having plenty of charm in its own right, it is the 15th-century castle that is the real draw for the Roman daytrippers who make the hour-and-a-half-minute train journey – and for Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, whose ill-fated marriage began here in 2006.

Castello Orsini-Odescalchi has seen it all… Popes, armies, popes’ armies. The castle has been a centre of military squabbling for much of its history, and a centre of intrigue for at least as long. Perhaps most excitingly, in the 16th century it was home to Paolo Giordano Orsini, the Duke of Bracciano, and his wife Isabella Romola de' Medici. If those names sound familiar, it’s because their unhappy ends were chronicled by Webster in The White Devil. Legend has it that Isabella would have her lovers brought to her room in secret every night; when she was done with them they would be ejected through a secret trap door and dropped into a well lined with blades. Imagine a cross between Miss Trunchbull’s chokey, an iron maiden and a long-drop loo…

Despite still being owned by the princely Odescalchi family, the castle is open to the public, and its richly furnished interior contains all sorts of treasures and horrors. There are gorgeous frescoes on the walls, and the armoury is well-stocked should the Pope’s men make another attempt at a siege. From the towers of the castle there are spectacular views. To one side, the town is arrayed in all its wonderful chaos; turn the other way and the lake spreads beneath you like a skein of silk, Virgin-blue, draped over the landscape.

Once you’ve tired of the castle, take a look at the medieval churches scattered around the town. The most impressive is probably St Stephen’s Cathedral, otherwise known as the Parrocchia di Bracciano. Although it dates from medieval times, it has become a rather lovely patchwork of additions over the years, with its butter-yellow façade and eccentric bell tower. The baroque interior is a spectacular place to cool down in and take a few calming breaths.

Near Bracciano lurk four aircraft hangars which house an enormous collection of vintage planes and make up the Italian Air Force Museum. Lined up in endless rows and hemmed in by ropes, they look like a cluster of caged birds with their wings clipped. The temptation to liberate one and take an aerial look at the waters of Lake Bracciano is near irresistible. But resist it you must – the museum is run by the Italian Air Force, which takes a rather dim view of high jinks.

Where to stay in Bracciano

Hotel Villa Clementina is a charmingly eccentric spot. It’s set in an exquisite botanical garden, the bedrooms decorated with murals. Sip a morning coffee beneath the kind eye of an unabashedly nude, Roman-style statue as fragrant breezes ruffle the leaves of the fig trees overhead; then bathe like a caesar in the intricately mosaicked pool, which is fed salty mineral water from a spring about 260ft below. There’s a spa, tennis and petanque courts and a restaurant at which you can have a delicious dinner while discussing Roman history with owner Fausto Bonetti. Just make sure to leave the hotel at least once during your stay.

Getting to Bracciano

Trains leave regularly from Rome’s Ostiense and Tiburtina stations and take between 55 and 70 minutes. Tickets cost from €3.60. You can drive from Rome in about an hour, but remember that the traffic can be unpredictable.

Trevignano Romano

Though Trevignano Romano is little more than a fishing village today, it has far grander roots. The town stands on the site of the ancient Etruscan city-state of Sabate, of which nothing remains today but tombs, legend and the whispers of the occasional ancient geographer, half-lost through the millennia. The great necropolis of Olivetello stretches back for almost two miles behind the town, where nearly 3,000 years ago people would burrow into the hillside now honeycombed with tombs to bury their dead. The great, long-forgotten nobles of Sabate went into the afterlife with all the essentials for the journey: chariots, weapons, ornaments and finely decorated bronze flabella, or ceremonial fans. The remains of these, dating from between about 800 and 600 BC, can be visited in the haphazard little museum in the town hall.

On a peak above the town, as ominous and romantic as something from a Gothic novel, the ruins of a medieval fortress squat above yet another staggeringly lovely view. Seeming almost to grow out of the landscape, the jagged remains are softened by the grass and ivy which curl around them. This castle was commissioned in 1200 by Pope Innocent III, and later reinforced by the Orsini family. A siege by the Borgias in 1497 proved too much for the fortress, however, and it was never rebuilt. Brought low by time and the occasional earthquake, the ruins are atmospheric in that way that only Italy really knows how to be. Bring a bottle up here at dusk and watch as the heavy sun spills orange light like a burst yolk down the flanks of the far-off mountains and across the lake, lending an otherworldly glow to the little town and the crags of its tumbledown castle.

The inhabitants of Trevignano have taken a pragmatic approach to antiquity throughout the centuries. Some of the ramshackle medieval houses of the town centre have been found to contain sections of Roman villas, stolen wholesale; the tower of Santa Maria Assunta church used to belong to the fort above the town. Not much has changed – locals claim that there are houses being built today whose garages are repurposed Etruscan tombs. In a thousand years, archaeologists will despair as the people of Trevignano Romano turn the remains of our blocks of flats into storage for their hover-cars.

Santa Maria Assunta has more than its stolen tower to offer sightseers. There is also a startling 16th-century depiction of the death and ascension of the Virgin Mary, which decorates the church’s apse. The fresco shows a bevy of saints crowding around the Virgin’s deathbed, halos practically clanking together as they shoulder one another out of the way. Meander down to the town’s long promenade to sniff out some fresh seafood. Unlike Bracciano, Trevignano is set along the lake, low to the water. The promenade, lined with palm trees, bars and restaurants, stretches for two miles and is the perfect place to enjoy the warm evening breezes during your passeggiata, or just to lounge on a bench and contemplate the water. People have been gazing into this landscape since prehistory – squint, and you might almost be there with them.

Where to stay in Trevignano Romano

Albergo Borgo Vistalago is a bar with a 500-year history, and an adorable, somewhat wonky façade. The hotel which shares its name is scattered around several of the surrounding medieval buildings, all very close to the lake and the promenade. Rooms are recently refurbished, and do a great job of melding the houses’ roughly hewn stone brickwork with a more modern aesthetic.

Each room and suite is done up in its own style, and the hotel makes a virtue of this. What it does mean, though, is that things can be a little hit and miss. The better rooms here are the most tasteful in Trevignano by some margin, but one or two edge into slightly Argos catalogue-y territory. Request a specific room if you can, and bear in mind that the ones above the bar have had a few noise complaints.

Getting to Trevignano Romano

Trains to Bracciano leave regularly from Rome’s Ostiense or Tiburtina stations, and take about 65–85 minutes. Tickets cost about €4. From Bracciano you can take a 15-minute bus or taxi to Trevignano Romano. There’s also a tiny ferry that will take you there from Bracciano or Anguillara Sabazia in the summer. You can drive from Rome in about an hour, but remember to allow for traffic.

Lake Bracciano

Lake Bracciano has been supplying fresh water to the people of Rome for nearly 2000 years; since the emperor Trajan built the first of many aqueducts that would link it umbilically to the city. It’s still a vital source of drinking water today, which explains its shimmering clarity - the water is clear as gin, blue as curaçao - and hence its popularity with burned-out modern-day Romans, looking for a place to escape the intensity of city life. Only a very few police boats and fishermen may use their engines, making it one of the least polluted lakes in Italy - and one of the most tranquil.

Being only an hour or so away means that Lake Bracciano makes for a fantastic day trip from Rome, but there’s enough here to amuse you for much longer. Paddle-boarding, wind-surfing, canoeing and countless other activities will keep you in the water until your fingers prune, while the national park that surrounds the lake is wonderful for riding and hiking. Best of all, though, is the history, culture and beauty of the three towns, Bracciano, Anguillara Sabazia and Trevignano Romano, that have overlooked the lake for more than a millennium.