The Aurunci Mountains landscape

The Aurunci mountains range are a complex calcareous mountain range dropping into the Tyrrhenian sea of the southern Latium. In their southern borders they fall into the sea with beautiful and spectaculars cliffs like around Punta Cetarola in Sperlonga or Mt Orlando in Gaeta . The Aurunci mountains occupy the whole internal areas of the Land of Aeneas and Ulysses . The territory within the park’s borders offers many natural treasures to tourists, excursionists and whoever loves nature.

There are always special encounters with its wildlife, natural springs, forests as well as with ancient heritage and traditions. Its landscapes enclose perfectly the real soul and essence itself of this ancient land: harsh, placid, wild and solemn. In this territories the traveller finds impervious gorges, green, fertile valleys, wonderful plateaus with green fields of wild flowers and superb forests. This a land where one’s can happily lose the exact perception of the passing time in the suggestion felt by the sea blending with the far horizon and among the thousand scents of the wild aromatic plants.

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Seen in the morning from the wild mountains of Abruzzi the lower lands of southern Lazio appear like in a watercolour painting with soft, ethereal clouds in ever-changing shapes; among the pale cloudy shades and a shining blue sky many peaks come into sight sometime covered of thick green patches of woods or calcareous white like the rocks in an ancient sea of millions years ago. As the clouds fade in the sky the landscape seem to take shape and colours magically.

The profile of South Pontino in southern Lazio’s pre-Apennines Aurunci Mountains reveals its real scenery. From here the imposing peak of Mount Fammera seems to be the southernmost pinnacle of these mountains but it only hides other lower hills very close to the sea, the more serene Mediterranean face of this territory.

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On the inside, the Aurunci Mountains disclose a different nature. Whereas on the seaside of southern Lazio’s coasts wintertime is short and normally mitigate, only few miles inside it can be longer in duration and very harsh and intense at its peak from December to mid-March. Deep, rocky gorges with overhanging cliffs, ample valleys covered with Mediterranean woods and fields

with hills that from inland extend their slopes and cliffs up to the waves of the South Tyrrhenian Sea. This is the hidden and unheard Mediterranean wilderness offered to travellers by the Aurunci Mountains Natural Park. The protected area extends for almost 200 square kilometres.

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The park is a real paradise for birdwatchers experts and beginners alike. Among its vertical cliffs nests the Peregrine Falcon, quit easy to spot whilst hunting with vertical swoops of over 700 metres to catch its preys. The park offers spectacular itineraries among woods, dales which often are real terraces over the blue sea with the far gorgeous Pontine Islands still visible in the horizon of the traditional Mediterranean landscape. The park’s hills and mountains are similar to a mythic land when the morning mist and clouds have still to clear the sky and the scenery is one of the most spectacular in central Italy.

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