Monte San Bartolo Natural Park

Monte San Bartolo Natural Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Monte San Bartolo is a regional park on the Adriatic coast of the Marche, in central Italy, a strip of high, green coastal hills between the seaside resorts of Gabicce Mare and Pesaro, the birthplace of Rossini, and it has no connection with the village of San Bartolo Coyotepec near Oaxaca in Mexico, which turns up beside it in searches. It is easily reached: Pesaro is on the main Adriatic railway line and motorway, half an hour south of Rimini, and the park begins at the northern edge of the town. There are no gates and no fees. The park is strung along the Strada Panoramica Adriatica, a narrow, winding road of about twenty-five kilometres that follows the crest of the hills from Pesaro to Gabicce Monte, with the sea far below on one side and farmland on the other, passing through four small villages perched on the ridge;

it is a celebrated route for cyclists, including those on rented electric bicycles, and for motorists with time to stop. From the road and the villages, marked footpaths, steep and occasionally closed by landslips, drop through broom and scrub to a series of wild pebble beaches under the cliffs, which cannot be reached by car and are consequently uncrowded even in August. The guided nature hikes sold in Pesaro follow these paths with a naturalist; stand-up paddleboard and kayak tours set out from Pesaro's Baia Flaminia and paddle along the foot of the cliffs, the best way to see them; and boat trips run along the coast in summer. The park authority's visitor centre is in Pesaro, and the Villa Imperiale, on the park's edge, is open to guided visits in summer by reservation.

Visiting Monte San Bartolo Natural Park: what you will see

The Parco Naturale Regionale del Monte San Bartolo was established in 1994 and covers about 1,600 hectares. Its significance is geographical. From Trieste to the Gargano peninsula, five hundred kilometres to the south, the Italian shore of the Adriatic is almost entirely low and sandy, and built up with an unbroken line of beach resorts; here, and only here in the north, the first hills of the Apennines come right down to the water, and the sea has cut them into a living cliff, the falesia, up to two hundred metres high, of soft, pale sandstones and marls laid down in the Miocene, which slumps, slides and retreats year by year, leaving narrow beaches of pebbles at its foot. Monte San Bartolo itself, at the Pesaro end, is 197 metres high, and Monte Castellaro and Monte Brisighella continue the ridge northwards. The cliffs are clothed in yellow broom, which flowers spectacularly in May and June, giant reed, tamarisk, and patches of oak and pine, and they are a landmark for migrating birds following the coast: in spring, honey buzzards, marsh harriers, kestrels and other raptors pass in numbers, and a count is kept;

peregrines nest on the cliff, and in winter red-throated divers, eiders and cormorants gather offshore. The sandstones contain fossil fish of the Messinian age, when the Mediterranean all but dried up. The ridge villages are tiny and fortified: Fiorenzuola di Focara, with a gate and a fragment of wall, is mentioned by Dante in the Inferno for the dangerous winds off its headland, to which sailors addressed their prayers; Casteldimezzo keeps a miraculous crucifix said to have come ashore from the sea; Santa Marina Alta and Gabicce Monte have terraces from which the coast is visible as far as Rimini and, on clear days, the mountains of Croatia. On the landward slope stands the Villa Imperiale, begun by the Sforza in the fifteenth century and enlarged for the dukes of Urbino by Girolamo Genga in the 1530s, with frescoed rooms and terraced gardens, one of the finest Renaissance villas of the Marche. Excavations at Colombarone have uncovered a late Roman villa and early Christian basilica.

Monte San Bartolo Natural Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open at all times. May and June, when the broom is in flower, the raptors are passing and the sea is warming, and September are the best months; July and August are hot, the panoramic road is busy with Italian holiday traffic and cyclists, and the hidden beaches are at their most useful; winter is mild, windy and empty, with the clearest views.

The paths to the beaches are steep, unshaded and slippery after rain, and some are closed from time to time because of cliff falls, so check locally and carry water. Pesaro's Rossini Opera Festival takes place in August. Allow a half-day to a full day. Pesaro is at the southern end, the castle of Gradara, of Paolo and Francesca fame, ten minutes inland, Urbino forty-five minutes, and Rimini and San Marino half an hour north.