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The Gran Sasso Laga National Park with its 201.400 hectares which comprise two of the most important mountain-groups, The Gran Sasso -Laga National Park is by far Italy's most extensive National Park. Within the parks boundaries The Big Horn (Il Corno Grande) rises majestically to a hight of 2912 meters above sea level and towers over the numerous surrounding mountain peaks of over 2000 mts a.s.l. giving the eastern most part of the mountain sky-line a decisively dolomitic appearance with its spectacular jagged rock rising up from the foot hills. To the west, instead, you'll notice a Tibetan-like landscape: extensive plateaux; a landscape obviously "modelled and shaped by years of erosion and ancient glaciers; and green grassland. Both directions offer steep slopes, jutting peaks, pyramid - like needles, all characteristics of high attitudes. The national park is home of Il Calderone (The Calderon) which is the parks only glacier and the southern-most European glacier. The Gran Sasso has a decisively alpine flavour: important mountain summits and a myriad of scenic high attitudes routes, where on a clear day you can see as far as the Adriatic and Tirrenian Seas and a great deal of central Italy. Between the boundaries of Abruzzo, Marche and Lazio, the mounts of the Laga district have softer and more restful qualities with its forests and streams, waterfalls and lakes. Although Mount Gorzano reaches a height of 2500 mts a.s.l., the mountains of the Laga district differ greatly from the other Appennine mountains especially with regard to the structure of the rock and its myriad of brooks and streams that run through its splendid fir-tree forests, nast beech- tree and birch forests. The park's fauna includes the wolf, the chamois, the wild cat, the fox, the badger, the skunk, the pine marten, the weasel, the beach-marten, the otter, the hedgehog, the squirrel and the dormouse. Among the bird varieties are the royal eagle, the kestrel, the buzzard, the red wood-pecker, the cough, the roving falcon, the cuckoo and the hoopoe bird. The flora, (above all high attitude flora) also has interesting and various types of gentian, edelweiss, numerous varieties of orchids including some ice-age species. The entire territory is characterised by a series of charming well preserved villages which date back to medieval times. A characteristic feature of the Gran Sasso and the Laga district in their richness of "flavours" of the past which above all bring back memories of pastoral life.