Gran Paradiso: the first national park, from 1922

Gran Paradiso is the first national park in Italy, established in 1922 on the former Savoy royal hunting reserve, covering 71,044¹ hectares across 13 comuni in Valle d'Aosta and Piedmont.

1922, and a royal hunting reserve

The park was born in 1922 out of the hunting reserve of the House of Savoy, which is the reason it exists at all: the ibex survived here because the crown had reserved them for itself.

It covers 71,044¹ hectares, roughly five times the area of the city of Turin, across 13 comuni in two regions, Valle d'Aosta and Piedmont.

Fewer than 300¹ people live inside the park boundary, against 8,160¹ in the 13 comuni taken together. That ratio is the park in one line: a large protected area with its population living around the edge of it, in valleys that empty as you climb.

The only 4,000 meter summit entirely in Italy

The Gran Paradiso reaches 4,061² meters and is the only peak above 4,000² meters lying wholly within Italian territory. Monte Bianco and Monte Rosa are higher and both sit on a border.

Inside the same boundary the park counts 59 glaciers, 183² lakes, 168² vertebrate species and 1,124² plant species.

Those figures come from a single primary source, the park authority's own sustainability report. We have not found an independent confirmation, and the glacier count in particular is the kind of number that shrinks between one survey and the next.

553 km of paths, and 65% of them are royal

The park has 553² kilometers of marked paths, and 65% of that network follows the mule tracks built for the royal hunts.

That statistic explains what walking here feels like. Royal hunting tracks were engineered for pack animals carrying equipment and for a king who did not want to be out of breath, so they climb at a constant, forgiving gradient and traverse rather than attack the slope.

The consequence for planning is that distances are long and gradients are manageable, which is the opposite of the Dolomite profile. Budget a day by hours on the path, not by meters of ascent.

How many national parks Italy has, and why the answer moves

24 national parks have an operating authority in 2026, and the official map of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security georeferences 24 of them.

The same ministry's written list, updated May 21, 2025, has 27 entries. The three extra are Matese and Portofino, both marked with provisional boundaries, and Golfo di Orosei e del Gennargentu, established by law but never made operational. The ISPRA indicator gives 26.

24, 26 or 27: all three are official and all three count something different. This site uses 24, because a park with no authority has no rangers, no visitor center and no rules being enforced, which is what a traveler actually meets on the ground.

What the parks add up to

National parks account for 46.5%⁵ of Italy's protected land surface, around 1.48⁵ million hectares, on the ISPRA indicator updated to 2024.

Set the 71,044¹ hectares of Gran Paradiso against that total and its real weight becomes visible: the first park is not the largest, and the system it started grew far past it.

That is the useful way to read the 1922 date. It is not a claim about size but about sequence, and every other Italian national park is downstream of the decision taken here. See national parks in Italy and Valle d'Aosta.

↑ Contents