Stelvio

Stelvio National Park was created in 1935 and is, along with Gran Paradiso, Circeo and Abruzzo, one of Italy's four historic national parks. It extends across the Ortles-Cevedale massif, in the heart of the central Alps, shared between Lombardy, Trentino and South Tyrol, and since 2016 its management has been devolved among those three administrations.

It is a high-mountain park in the strict sense: much of its area lies above 2,000 metres and it culminates in the Ortles, which rises above 3,900. It preserves a still extensive glacier system, with ice tongues, cirques and moraines, though in accelerating retreat, and from it deep valleys descend to the inhabited valley floors. The Stelvio Pass, at more than 2,700 metres, is one of the highest road passes in the Alps.

The vegetation is tiered from the mixed and conifer forests of the valleys up to the larch and Swiss stone pine of the tree line, and above that the alpine pastures and rock vegetation. The wildlife is the classic Alpine set and is well represented: the Alpine ibex, recovered after its near-extinction, the chamois, red deer, roe deer and marmot, together with a birdlife that includes the golden eagle and the bearded vulture, reintroduced to the Alps from the 1980s onwards and present in the park today. Summer grazing on the malghe and the traditional mountain irrigation systems form part of the area's cultural landscape.