The Miramare Castle stretches from the peninsula of Grignano, on the Gulf of Trieste. A 22-hectare romantic park frames the castle and then degrade towards the sea. Until 1855 the park area was a barren and fallow land, that the young and romantic Archduke Maximilian of Habsburg transformed into a beautiful garden, to frame the white, eclectic cast...
This botanical garden, the oldest in Italy and covering 2.4 acres, is near the French-Italian border, on the Piccolo San Bernardo Hill, in Valle d’Aosta, at an altitude of 7.119 ft above sea level. The garden was created by the local abbot Pierre Chanoux in 1897: a passionate naturalist, he was among the first residents to ask tourists and mountain...
Clitunno springs (Fonti del Clitunno) stretch over a 2.5-acre area along Via Flaminia, between Spoleto and Foligno, in the municipality of Campello sul Clitunno, Umbria. The whole area is served by underground springs that flow from natural cracks in the rock. There are two main outlets which actually feed the Clitunno River: the so-called “Sources...
Pollino National Park is the widest protected area in Italy and it is named after Pollino massif. It was established in 1988 and it covers a surface of 192.565 hectares, of which 103.915 are in Calabria and the others are in Basilicata including the areas of Potenza, Matera, Cosenza and other 56 municipalities. The territory presents different char...
Valle Introna, in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, is an ancient valley, where intense mining has been performed over the (gold in the Upper Valley and iron in Val Brevettola), although most of the inhabitants emigrated in 1600, after a great landslide. At the beginning of the XX century, the vertical slopes and the abundance of water and natu...
Located in the territory of Vastogirardi (Isernia), the Montedimezzo Reserve, the one in Collemeluccio and that of Pescolanciano, constitute a “Biosphere Reserve”, part of the UNESCO program called “Man and Biosphere” (MaB); its main purpose is to study the relationships between man and nature, in order to develop sustainable development techniques...
The Ducal Park of Pavullo nel Frignanno in the Modena province in Emilia Romagna has an extension of 14 hectares, from Palazzo Ducale and Via Giardini till the slopes of Monte dei Frati, till fading in the wood. Its story is connected to the one of Palazzo Ducale, built by the duke Francesco IV d’Este (1779-1846) as a vacation residence for the co...
“Gran Bosco della Mesola” National Reserve is located in the province of Ferrara, Emilia Romagna, and it represents on of the last and best conserved ancient lowland woods, which were typical of the Po valley and a memory of the forests on the Adriatic coast, which disappeared in the last century. It has a surface of 1,058 hectares and it is the wi...
The Upper Murgia (“Alta Murgia”) National Park was established in 1998 to protect the last example of the Mediterranean steppe in Italy. The park stretches from the Adriatic coast to the Lucanian reliefs, reaching the maximum height of 2.227 ft on Mount Caccia; it is mainly made of limestone, tuffs, clay deposits, sands and alluvial deposits mixed...
The Botanical Garden of Villa Beuca, on the western slope of Beuca hill, was built in 2002 by the Municipality of Cogoleto. Its aim is to safeguard the typical plant environments of Liguria. It extends over 8.4 acres divided into three main areas – an instructional one, an area for the spontaneous plant, and a typical Ligurian environment – in a re...
The state-owned forest of Marganai covers an area of 9.020 acres, in the province of Carbonia-Iglesias; this forest can be actually found within the Monte Linas-Marganai Park (55.000 acres), in the territories of Domusnovas, Fluminimaggiore, Gonnosfanadiga, Iglesias, and Villacidro. Mount Marganai area is north-east of the park and borders with Mou...
This park is a protected natural area established in 1987 and which extends on the promontory of the same name, in the province of Ancona. It includes a stretch of coast and an internal hilly belt, with breath-taking views, a lot of history, and wonderful landscapes. The park covers about 15.000 acres and extends over the territories of Ancona, Cam...