Gran Sasso: the Apennines' highest peak, 2,912 m

Corno Grande is the highest peak in the Apennines at 2,912¹ meters, and the Calderone in the bowl beneath it is described by the park authority as the southernmost glacial body in Europe.

150,000 hectares over three regions

The Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga national park was created by framework law 394¹ of December 6, 1991 and given its definitive boundaries by presidential decree on June 5, 1995, after a provisional perimeter set by ministerial decree on December 4, 1992.

It covers 150,000¹ hectares across 3 regions, Abruzzo, Lazio and Marche, and 5 provinces: L'Aquila, Teramo, Pescara, Ascoli Piceno and Rieti. The original plan was for 220,000¹ hectares, so the park as built is smaller than the park as designed.

Its headquarters have been at Assergi, near L'Aquila, since 2001, in a fourteenth century former Franciscan convent. The number of comuni involved is often given as 44 by third party sources and does not appear on the authority's own pages, so we do not print it.

Corno Grande, 2,912 meters

Corno Grande is the highest summit of the Apennines at 2,912¹ meters, and the figure refers to the western top. The massif also carries the Torrione Cambi, the central summit and the eastern summit on the same crest.

The height comes from the park authority, which publishes it on its factsheet about the glacier below. That matters because Apennine elevations circulate in several versions and this is the operator's own.

Above Campo Imperatore the landscape is a high plateau rather than a valley system, which is why photographs of it look like nowhere else in Italy and why the weather changes faster than the map suggests.

The Calderone: what to call it now

The Calderone sits in the north facing bowl under the 2,912¹ meter summit of Corno Grande, and the park authority calls it the southernmost glacial body in Europe, after the complete disappearance of the Sierra Nevada glacier in Spain. The authority puts its surface at five hectares and describes longitudinal and transverse crevasses.

That description needs a date and does not have one. The authority's factsheet is undated, and the scientific community has downgraded the Calderone to a glacieret, a body that has lost its downhill movement. The five hectare figure is very likely an overestimate of what is there in 2026.

So the honest formulation is the cautious one: the Calderone is the last glacial body of the Apennines, and its size should not be quoted as a current measurement. There is more on what happened to Italy's southern ice at the Marmolada collapse.

Up by cable car: 3,173 meters of span

The Gran Sasso cable car climbs from Fonte Cerreto, a hamlet of L'Aquila, to Campo Imperatore on a twin cable installation 3,173⁵ meters long, carrying up to 760⁵ people an hour.

In summer 2026 the timetable was first car at 8:00 am, departures every 30 minutes except the one at 1:30 pm, and last car up and down at 5:00 pm, every day. A return ticket was €16.50⁵, €14.00 on the agreed rate, €11.00 one way in either direction, €6.00 for a bicycle, free for children up to their sixth birthday. Residents of L'Aquila paid €8.00, valid only if bought and used by 9:30 am.

In winter 2025 to 2026 a day skipass was €25.00 on weekdays and €35.00 on Sundays and holidays, with a compulsory key card at €3.00, over 3 lifts and 13 kilometers of piste. The operator does not publish the altitudes of the two stations, so we do not print them, and it warns that the hostel and the adjacent square stayed closed through the summer 2026 season for works. See Abruzzo, hiking in Abruzzo and L'Aquila.

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