Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga

Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park was created in 1991 and extends mainly across Abruzzo, with sectors in Lazio and the Marche. It protects the roof of the Apennine range: Corno Grande, rising above 2,900 metres, is the highest summit in the Apennines and the highest point in peninsular Italy outside the Alps.

On its northern flank survives the Calderone glacier, regarded as the most southerly glacier in Europe, today reduced to little more than a small body of ice in accelerating retreat and turned into one of the most cited indicators of climate change in the Mediterranean. At its foot opens Campo Imperatore, a high plain of glacial and karst origin tens of square kilometres in extent, treeless, grazed for centuries and known as Italy's little Tibet for its desolate appearance. The Monti della Laga sector, by contrast, is of sandstone rather than limestone substrate, which gives it a very different hydrography, with abundant streams and waterfalls.

The park hosts the Apennine chamois population, an endemic subspecies of the central Apennines that came close to extinction and has recovered through reintroductions from the Abruzzo park. It is joined by the Apennine wolf, present as a stable population, the Marsican brown bear on occasional dispersal from the south, the golden eagle and a high-mountain flora with numerous Apennine endemics, favoured by the massif's isolation.