Precisely because of this characteristic it was defined in 1876 by the geologist Antonio Stoppani the Belpaese, known since then accompanies our beautiful peninsula. To protect this rich heritage in the last century have been established by the Italian State of the natural protected areas, located throughout Italy and containing ecosystems of the most beautiful existing. Of these reserves the oldest is the Gran Paradiso National Park, which is located around the homonymous mountain between Valle d’Aosta and Piedmont and was set up in Turin in 1922, though for reasons far from flowing from the protection environment.
Visit the Gran Paradiso National Park to discover its beauty and history
Its history is closely interwoven with the protection of its symbolic animal, the ibex. The ungulate, widespread onetime at high altitudes throughout the Alps has been subject to indiscriminate hunting for centuries, and it seems that just to maintain the exclusivity of this species the King Vittorio Emanuele II had established in these valleys a royal hunting reserve already in 1850.
Thus was born December 3, 1922 the Gran Paradiso National Park. Today the reserve covers 71,000 hectares of mountainous terrain, and includes forests, marshes, lakes, waterfalls, and about 30 glaciers spread across 5 valleys.
It can also boast a view of the most varied fauna of the peninsula: buzzards, woodpeckers, owls, eagles, wolves, marmots, foxes, lynx, chamois, ibex, these and numerous other species inhabit the Park, creating a perfect ecosystem, although still weighs the lack of large predators, extinct because of royal hunting.
