Gran Paradiso or the Abruzzo park: which to visit

Go to Gran Paradiso for glaciers, ibex country and a summit at 4,061² m, and to the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise park for beech forest and Italy's largest bear population, about 50 Marsican bears; both parks trace their start to 1922.

Two parks from the same year

Gran Paradiso's 71,044 ha¹ is a single figure; the Abruzzo park's 50,500 ha³ is given as an approximation by the park itself, and its contiguous area, 77,500 ha³, is larger than the park.

Both are among the 24 national parks with an operating management body in 2026, out of 27 entries on the environment ministry's written list, and national parks together make up 46.5%⁸ of Italy's protected land. On the ministry's list, Gran Paradiso's main region is Valle d'Aosta and the Abruzzo park's is Abruzzo, although each crosses into neighboring regions.

Gran Paradiso began as a king's hunting ground

Gran Paradiso was created in 1922 on the former Savoy hunting reserve, and its managing body calls it the first Italian national park. It covers 71,044 ha¹, about five times the area of Turin, across 13 municipalities in Valle d'Aosta and Piedmont.

The hunting past is still under your boots. Of the park's 553 km² of trails, 65% follow the old royal hunting mule tracks, so a good part of any walk here runs on paths laid out for a king's hunting parties.

Fewer than 300¹ people live inside the park boundary, against 8,160¹ in its 13 municipalities. You're walking through a mountain that was kept empty on purpose.

The Abruzzo park started with private money

The Abruzzo park was born in 1922 as a private initiative and became law in 1923 with Royal Decree-Law no. 257³. It has carried its current name, Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, only since 2001.

It spans about 50,500 ha³ in the provinces of L'Aquila, Frosinone and Isernia, with 77,500 ha³ of contiguous area around it and 24 municipalities: 12 in Abruzzo, 7 in Lazio, 5 in Molise. Headquarters are at Viale Santa Lucia 2 in Pescasseroli, and 32 rangers cover the whole of it.

Forest is the point. About 30,000 ha³ are woodland, 4,400 ha³ are strict reserves, and the park lists its oldest trees by age: a black pine at Villetta Barrea estimated at 535³ years, and a beech in Val Cervara at 560³.

Ice on one side, forest on the other

Gran Paradiso's highest point is 4,061² m and the Abruzzo park's is Monte Petroso at 2,249³ m. That gap decides everything about the walking.

In Gran Paradiso the landscape is counted in ice and water: 59 glaciers and 183² lakes. In the Abruzzo park the three high points, Petroso, Marsicano at 2,245³ m and Meta at 2,242³ m, sit above a sea of beech, and Lago di Barrea is a listed Ramsar wetland.

The biodiversity numbers follow the altitude. Gran Paradiso records 168² vertebrate species and 1,124² plant species. For the Abruzzo park we have the bears, the trees and the reserves, but no species count in our sources.

One park is built around the bear

The Abruzzo park authority estimates about 50 Marsican brown bears, with a range of 45 to 69, almost all of them inside the park. It's the largest bear population in Italy, and the subspecies, Ursus arctos marsicanus, lives in the central Apennines and nowhere else in our sources.

Gran Paradiso's animal is the ibex, the reason the reserve existed at all. The two parks were founded to protect different animals, and each still organizes its identity around one.

If you want to understand why the Abruzzo bears are native while the Trentino ones were brought in from Slovenia, that's on the Marsican bear and the Trentino bear.

What the parks don't tell you

Neither park publishes a visitor count in our sources, so we can't tell you which one is busier. The Abruzzo park's trail network isn't measured in kilometers anywhere we could verify, and the park authority gives no year for its bear estimate.

A genetic monitoring program under way in 2026 should produce a new bear count. Until then, treat 50 as the working number the park itself uses.

Pick which

Pick Gran Paradiso if you want high mountain walking on old royal tracks, glaciers in view, and a chance of ibex; start from the Gran Paradiso park page.

Pick the Abruzzo park if you want forest walking at lower altitude and the park where almost all of Italy's Marsican bears live; see the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise park and hiking in Abruzzo. The shared founding year is told on 1922, the first two parks.

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