Cinque Terre National Park
Liguria, Italy
Cinque Terre National Park protects the five fishing villages and terraced cliffs of the Ligurian coast between Levanto…
211 tickets & tours
Country
Best national parks in Italy
Italy has twenty-five national parks and a much larger number of regional parks and marine reserves, and the most visited are on the coast. Cinque Terre is a national park whose trails link five villages and whose train does the work for those who would rather not walk; Portofino and Porto Venere continue the same Ligurian coast. Sicily has Zingaro, walked along a roadless shore, the salt pans of the Stagnone, Vendicari, the Alcantara gorges and the necropolis canyon of Pantalica. Sardinia offers Asinara, a former prison island, and Porto Conte by Alghero.
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Zingaro Nature Reserve
Sicily, Italy
Zingaro is the seven-kilometre stretch of wild coast between Scopello and San Vito lo Capo in north-western Sicily, the…
33 tickets & tours
Pantelleria National Park
Sicily, Italy
Pantelleria is the volcanic island between Sicily and Tunisia, nearer to Africa than to Europe, reached by a short…
13 tickets & tours
Porto Conte Regional Natural Park
Sardinia, Italy
Porto Conte is the bay and the limestone headlands west of Alghero in north-western Sardinia, twenty minutes from the…
13 tickets & tours
Pollino National Park
Calabria, Italy
Pollino is the largest national park in Italy, a block of mountains across the instep of the peninsula where Calabria…
11 tickets & tours
Alcantara Gorges (Alcantara River Park)
Sicily, Italy
The Alcantara gorges lie on the north side of Etna, forty minutes from Taormina and an hour from Catania, and they are…
10 tickets & tours
Asinara National Park
Sardinia, Italy
Asinara is the long, empty island off the north-western tip of Sardinia, which was closed to the public for 112 years…
7 tickets & tours
Vesuvius National Park
Campania, Italy
Vesuvius stands nine kilometres east of Naples, and the visit that nearly everyone makes is the walk to the rim of the…
6 tickets & tours
Nebrodi Regional Park
Sicily, Italy
The Nebrodi are the green mountains of north-eastern Sicily, a long range between the Tyrrhenian coast and the northern…
5 tickets & tours
Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park
Abruzzo, Italy
The Abruzzo National Park, as everyone still calls it, is the wild heart of the central Apennines, and the astonishing…
4 tickets & tours
Aspromonte National Park
Calabria, Italy
Aspromonte is the mountain at the very tip of the toe of Italy, a massif that rises from the Strait of Messina and the…
4 tickets & tours
Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni National Park
Campania, Italy
The Cilento is the mountainous bulge of coast south of Salerno, in the region of Campania in southern Italy, between…
4 tickets & tours
Molentargius-Saline Regional Park
Sardinia, Italy
Molentargius is a wetland of lagoons and abandoned salt pans lying inside the urban area of Cagliari, the capital of…
3 tickets & tours
Porto Venere Regional Natural Park
Liguria, Italy
Porto Venere is a fishing town of tall, painted tower-houses on a rocky promontory at the western entrance to the Gulf…
3 tickets & tours
Sila National Park
Calabria, Italy
The Sila is a high, rolling plateau of forests, lakes and pastures in the middle of Calabria, the toe of Italy, a…
3 tickets & tours
Gargano National Park
Apulia, Italy
The Gargano is the spur of the Italian boot, a mountainous limestone promontory that juts sixty-five kilometres into…
2 tickets & tours
Monte San Bartolo Natural Park
Marche, Italy
Monte San Bartolo is a regional park on the Adriatic coast of the Marche, in central Italy, a strip of high, green…
2 tickets & tours
Pantalica Nature Reserve
Sicily, Italy
Pantalica is a limestone plateau ringed by deep river gorges in the Hyblaean hills of south-eastern Sicily, about forty…
2 tickets & tours
Portofino Regional Nature Park
Liguria, Italy
The Portofino park is a squarish, rocky headland that projects four kilometres into the Ligurian Sea on the Italian…
2 tickets & tours
Vendicari Nature Reserve
Sicily, Italy
Vendicari is a strip of wild coast in the far south-east of Sicily, between the baroque town of Noto, fifteen minutes…
2 tickets & tours
Alta Murgia National Park
Apulia, Italy
The Alta Murgia is a high, bare limestone plateau in the interior of Apulia, in the heel of Italy, beginning some forty…
1 ticket or tour
Gran Paradiso National Park
Aosta Valley, Italy
Gran Paradiso is the oldest national park in Italy and the best place in the Alps to see ibex at close quarters, a high…
1 ticket or tour
Maiella National Park
Abruzzo, Italy
The Maiella is a huge, rounded limestone massif in the region of Abruzzo, in central Italy, rising abruptly from the…
1 ticket or tour
Stagnone Islands Nature Reserve
Sicily, Italy
The Stagnone is a large, shallow lagoon on the westernmost coast of Sicily, between the wine town of Marsala, ten…
1 ticket or tour
The mountains are quieter than they deserve. Gran Paradiso and Stelvio are the alpine parks, the first created in 1922 from a royal hunting reserve to save the ibex; Abruzzo, Maiella and Pollino in the Apennines hold bears, wolves and old beech forest; Sila and Aspromonte fill the toe of Calabria. Vesuvius is a half-day from Naples with a timed ticket for the crater path.
Entry to almost all of them is free; what is sold are boats, guided walks and transfers. Coastal parks are best in May, June and September, and the high parks from late June until the first snow in October.