When one thinks of an Italian holiday the thought seldom occurs that apart from being the treasure chest of European art, fabulous cities and tourist attractions ranging from spectacular snow-fields to sun-drenched beaches, Italy is also the domain of a natural adventureland: it’s called Abruzzo, the regional heartland of Italy.

When an Australian journalist recently described Abruzzo (home to under one and a half million people as a quarter of a million dispersed all over the world after World War Two) as ‘Italy’s last wilderness’, he wasn’t just churning an idea into a nice turn of phrase. Abruzzo is a rugged mountainous region, with winter-snows turning the high peaks of the Apennine ranges into temporary glaciers. One of them, the Calderone (the cauldron) is actually Europe’s southermost perennial glacier at nearly 3000 metres.

Bears, wolves and deers
This is part of the Gran Sasso (Great Stone), the highest and most identifiable peak of the Apennine ranges which run the full length of the Italian peninsula. And around the Gran Sasso golden eagles still fly majestically while the surrounding dark forests are still inhabited by brown bears, and where evergreen plateaus are not only grazing grounds for domesticated cattle but also for free-roaming deers. Isolate villages are clustered on mountainsides and, at night, wolfs are still heard from inside those houses howl at the big yellow moon.
But Abruzzo’s unadulterated wilderness is not quite casual: after all its capital is called L’Aquila (which means The Eagle), and the Gran Sasso wilderness is a protected natural park because the Abruzzesi are a proud race of people quite conscious of the significance and value of their pristine world. A world which, surprise, surprise! is just two-hours (by road) east of Rome and perhaps an additional couple of hours south of Florence!

Yet, just as the Abruzzesi resisted for a long time ancient Rome’s expansionary movement (though they were eventually submitted like every other people in and around the Mediterranean), they put up an equally fierce defence of their medieval world against the advances of modernism led by the Renaissance. Scarpe grosse e cervello fino’ is how the people of Abruzzo have been described: ‘rugged boots but sharp minds’…

Incidently, just as one of ancient Rome’s greatest poets (Ovid) was born in Sulmona in 43 BC, one of last century’s greatest Italian philosophers, Benedetto Croce (1866-1952), hailed from Pescasseroli. Furthermore, Gabriele D’Annunzio, one of the country’s most colourful and controversial poets, writer and patriot (1863-1938) hailed from Pescara.

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