Puglia National Parks
The Italian region of Puglia is home to two beautiful national parks, Gargano and the Parco Nazionale dell’Alta Murgia. Both parks have a huge amount of history ready to explore while being set against the picturesque Italian landscape.
The Parco Nazionale dell’Alta Murgia is the second-largest national park in Puglia and was only formally established in 2004. It covers an area of 677 square kilometers and lies near the town of Gravina. The park is part of a much large protection area designed to look after the grass steppe, the habitat of the less kestrel.
As well as being home to a bustling selection of wildlife, the park also features the Castel del Monte, which is one of the most well-known castles in Italy, and is a world heritage site. The castle was built by King Frederick II in the 1240s after he inherited the land from his mother. Notably, the castle appears on the Italian one cent Euro and was not built with a moat or drawbridge, suggesting it was never intended as a defensive fortress. Instead, historians believe the king used it as a hunting lodge and small citadel.
The Parco Nazionale dell’Alla Murgia is also home to other features, including the bauxite mines, the Swabian castle of Gravina, a herbarium museum, Galietti’s pine forest, and several family graves. In the park, you can also find the Valley of Dinosaurs, which is the site where over 30,000 dinosaur footprints were discovered in 1999. A final feature of note is the Pulo di Altamura, which is the largest karst sinkhole on the Murgia plateau.
The other national park of Puglia, Gargano, is the largest and lies along the coast. It takes its name from the Gargano promontory which is a raised area of land in the nearby sea. The promontory is home to the ancient woodland of Forestra Umbra, a UNESCO world heritage site, where you can find over 2,000 plant species and Italy’s largest hardwood forest.
Additionally, Gargano includes the Tremiti Islands, an archipelago in the Adriatic sea which is north of the Gargano promontory. There are five different islands (San Domino, San Nicola, Capraia, Cretaccio, and Pianosa), all of which can be visited via various local ferry services. Up to 100,000 visitors come to see the islands every summer and explore their history. In the past, the islands were home to political prisoners during the times of MussoliniMussolini and were also the prison of Julia the Younger, granddaughter of Augustus.
Three of the Islands are uninhabited. Of the two habited islands, San Domino is most popular with tourists for its beautiful sandy beach, and San Nicola is where most locals reside. San Nicola’s name comes from the story of a monk named Nicolo, who was buried in a monastery located on the island. According to old legend, any time someone attempted to remove his corpse from the island, it would cause a great storm, preventing any travel to or from San Nicola.
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