Italian national parks by surface, and by count

The largest Italian national park is the Pollino at 192,500 ha⁶ on UNESCO's figure, or second at 171,132 ha⁶ behind the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni's 178,172 ha⁶ on the environment ministry's, and even the number of national parks depends on the source: 24, 26 or 27.

The criterion: published surface, and a declared count

Parks are ranked by the surface published by the ministry, the park authority or UNESCO, and where two of those disagree, both figures are shown. Parks whose surface isn't in our verified sources are listed separately, not estimated.

The count gets the same treatment. Three official sources give three totals, and none of them is wrong: they count different things.

Three official counts: 24, 26 and 27

The environment ministry's map shows 24 national parks with an operating management body in 2026. The same ministry's written list, updated on May 21, 2025, has 27 entries. ISPRA's statistics count 26.

The difference is three parks. The Matese and Portofino appear on the ministry's list with a provisional boundary; the Golfo di Orosei and Gennargentu park was established and never made operational. ISPRA includes Portofino, the map includes none of the three. National parks together make up 46.5%⁵ of Italy's protected land area, about 1.48⁵ million ha on ISPRA's 2024 indicator.

Ranked by surface

Eight of the 24 operational parks have a surface in our sources. The other sixteen are listed below.

The Pollino is first or second, depending on who measures

The Pollino, established in 1993 across Basilicata and Calabria on 55 municipalities, is 192,500 ha⁶ on UNESCO's figure, which recognized it as a Global Geopark in 2015. The environment ministry puts it at 171,132 ha⁶, second behind the Cilento, Vallo di Diano and Alburni at 178,172 ha⁶.

A gap of more than 21,000 ha between two official sources is not rounding: they're drawing different lines. We can't tell you which is right, so the table shows both. The park authority is in Rotonda, in the province of Potenza. More on the Pollino.

The big mountain parks in the middle

The Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga park covers 150,000 ha⁸ across Abruzzo, Lazio and Marche, on a boundary fixed by decree on June 5, 1995. The Stelvio exceeds 130,000 ha⁹ across Lombardy and Trentino-Alto Adige, around the Ortles-Cevedale group, and is run by three separate territorial bodies.

Below them the scale drops by half. The Sila covers 73,695 ha¹⁰ in 21 municipalities across three Calabrian provinces; Gran Paradiso, the first national park, 71,044 ha¹¹ on 13 municipalities; the Appennino Lucano park, the only one entirely in Basilicata, 68,996 ha¹² on 29 municipalities, all in the province of Potenza.

The sixteen without a published surface

Sixteen operational national parks have no surface in our verified sources: Dolomiti Bellunesi, Val Grande, Appennino Tosco-Emiliano, Cinque Terre, Foreste Casentinesi, Monti Sibillini, Arcipelago Toscano, Majella, Gargano, Circeo, Arcipelago di La Maddalena, Asinara, Vesuvio, Alta Murgia, Aspromonte and Isola di Pantelleria.

The national parks portal that would have given us their figures refused connections when we checked. Rather than fill the table from secondary sites, we've listed them and logged the gap. For every park by region, see national parks.

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