Hello fellow travelers!
It's been a while since I posted here on Hive, but I'm pretty busy because I'm moving house. However, today I wanted to tell you about a place I saw a while ago that I think is a great place to visit, especially for nature lovers. It's a park that's probably lesser-known to foreign visitors to Italy, but I think it's worth a visit.
I wanted to give you some historical and naturalistic information about the site, although I'll also leave you with links to other useful information at the bottom of the pages.
The Apuan Alps are a mountain range located between the Apennines and the Tyrrhenian Sea in Tuscany. This area of Tuscany is famous for its white marble quarries, but it's also home to a unique natural environment of rare beauty, which is why the regional natural park was established in 1985.
Although unfortunately, parks in Italy aren't like those in the United States, where they're better monitored and managed, here they're a bit left to their own devices. The only positive thing you find when you visit is the signs indicating the routes, which are sometimes placed there by volunteers. What I discovered is that this park was born from a popular mobilization in the 1970s (some say mobilizations are pointless).
Since 2011, the park has finally been part of the UNESCO Geoparks network, which I actually didn't even know existed. And I read on a sign inside the park that 50% of Tuscany's biodiversity is found here, which must be truly incredible, even including endemic plants.
One last thing: more than 1,300 caves have been recorded in this area; this is the morphology of this park: so many caves, as well as beautiful, lush valleys. I don't know if you've been here yet, but I think you should stop by. See you soon in my next post!
info: https://www.parcapuane.toscana.it/