Alta Murgia

Declared in 2004, it protects one of the last Mediterranean steppes in Italy, a karst plateau of sinkholes and caves where in 1993 the almost complete skeleton of a Neanderthal more than 150,000 years old was found — the Altamura Man — fossilised inside a stalactite cave. At its heart stands Castel del Monte, an octagonal fortress built around 1240 by Emperor Frederick II of the Holy Roman Empire, whose purpose and symbolism historians still debate, and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1996. In 2024 the park was further recognised as a UNESCO Global Geopark.