Italy's first two national parks both date from 1922

Italy's first two national parks both date from 1922: Gran Paradiso, 71,044¹ hectares carved out of the Savoy kings' hunting reserve in the western Alps, and the Abruzzo park in the central Apennines, started that year by private initiative and written into law in 1923.

A royal hunting reserve became park number one

Gran Paradiso National Park was created in 1922 on the former hunting reserve of the House of Savoy, and it is officially the first national park in Italy. It covers 71,044¹ hectares over 13 comuni split between Valle d'Aosta and Piedmont, which the park authority itself puts at roughly five times the surface of Turin.

The park's emblem is the ibex, and the reserve that came before the park still shapes the ground you walk on.

You still walk on royal infrastructure. Of the park's 553 km² of marked trails, 65% follow the old mule tracks built for the royal hunts.

Abruzzo got there without the state

The Abruzzo park was born in 1922 as a private initiative and became law only in 1923, with Regio Decreto-Legge n. 257³. The state, in other words, arrived a year after the people who wanted the park.

So the two founding stories run in opposite directions. In the Alps the state inherited a closed royal estate and changed its purpose. In the Apennines a private push came first and the law caught up.

The name has changed with the borders. Since 2001 it has been the Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo, Lazio e Molise, with its seat at Pescasseroli, and it takes in 24 comuni across the provinces of L'Aquila, Frosinone and Isernia. The park covers about 50,500³ hectares, with a contiguous zone of another 77,500³ around it.

What each park was protecting

Each park still has its signature animal: the ibex for Gran Paradiso, and for Abruzzo the Marsican brown bear. The park authority estimates around 50 Marsican bears, within a range of 45 to 69, and that is the largest bear population in Italy, living almost entirely inside the park.

One caution on that number. The authority's page speaks of recent studies but gives no year for the estimate, and a genetic monitoring project was under way in 2026. Read it as the park's working figure, not a dated census.

The Abruzzo park also keeps 4,400³ hectares of integral reserves and 30,000³ hectares of forest, and its oldest trees are a black pine at Villetta Barrea estimated at 535³ years and a beech in Val Cervara estimated at 560³.

The high numbers of Gran Paradiso

Gran Paradiso itself, at 4,061² m, stands entirely on Italian territory. The park counts 59 glaciers, 183² lakes and 168² vertebrate species, according to the managing body's own sustainability report.

Few people live inside it. The residents within the park boundary are fewer than 300¹, while the 13 comuni that share its territory have 8,160¹ between them. That ratio is the difference between a park with villages on its edge and one with villages in its middle.

From two parks to 24

In 2026 Italy has 24 national parks with an operating managing body, the number shown on the official map of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security. Gran Paradiso is the first on that list, and Abruzzo is the one that shares its founding year.

The 24 have very different histories, and the two from 1922 have the most unusual ones: a royal hunting estate turned over to protection, and a park that private backers started before the state signed it into law.

Seeing both on one trip

The two parks sit at opposite ends of the Italian mountain system, one on the Alpine border of Valle d'Aosta and Piedmont, the other where Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise meet. They are far apart, so most trips pick one of the two.

For the side by side, see Gran Paradiso vs the Abruzzo park. The single parks are at Gran Paradiso and Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, the full list at national parks, and the region at Valle d'Aosta.

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