Strawberry Festival

If you find yourself in Rome during the first week in June, you'll most likely be ready for a jaunt outside the city's boundaries come the weekend. The nearby town of Nemi offers an excellent escape from the imperial grandeur of the caput mundi, and provides the chance to honor something slightly more humble-the strawberry.

Strawberries, one of the last temperate-climate fruit to be cultivated, were not introduced to European gardens until sometime in the 15th century and were thought to be a love potion because of their fragrance and sensuous color. In most Romance languages, the word for strawberry comes from the Latin fragaria vesca (in Italian, strawberry is fragola.) One theory on the English word "strawberry" is that it comes from the way that this fruit was grown in England-with a layer of straw scattered around the plants so that the berries would not rest on the soil and rot.

Whatever the name, these red treats grow profusely on the hillsides surrounding Nemi, perhaps given their delectable flavor from the pure waters of the volcanic lake Nemi that shimmers nearby. On the second Sunday in June, many of the townspeople parade around, dressed as ancient strawberry pickers or even the berries themselves. Strawberries are eaten fresh or served with cream and sugar.

Strawberries are a unique fruit in that the strawberry seeds are actually the true fruit of the plant, while the tasty red flesh to which they are attached is only a carrier. Not only are strawberries tasty, but they are also healthy. Eight strawberries have about 50 calories and they are a good source of folate, vitamin C, fiber, potassium, and antioxidants.

Nemi is also famous for its archeological finds. Divers recovered two ancient Roman galleys from the depths of Lake Nemi, remarkably well preserved and informative. The ships were destroyed in WWII by German bombs, but one can only speculate that the Romans who used them to sail around Lake Nemi's waters were provisioned with some of its famed fruit as well.

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