Monti Sibillini

Medieval Europe knew these mountains as an address for the supernatural. In a cave near the summit of Monte Sibilla lived the Apennine Sibyl, prophetess or demon queen depending on the telling; knights and necromancers climbed to consult her, and one of them, Antoine de la Sale, left a written account and a map in 1420. Across the massif, in a glacial cirque under Monte Vettore's 2,476-metre crest, the twin-lobed Lago di Pilato was said to hold Pontius Pilate's body, delivered by runaway oxen. The lake's real secret is stranger: a small red fairy shrimp, Chirocephalus marchesonii, lives in this one lake on earth and nowhere else — which is why nobody may so much as dip a boot.

The park, created in 1993 along the Marche–Umbria crest, holds the Apennines' most famous view: the Piani di Castelluccio, karst plains ringed by bare summits, where from late June to mid-July the lentil fields erupt into the Fiorita — strips of poppy red, cornflower blue and mustard yellow under the village on its hill. That village is also the park's wound. The 2016–17 earthquake sequence had its epicentres here: Castelluccio was largely demolished, Visso — the park's seat — emptied, Norcia's basilica fell, and Monte Vettore still wears the fresh white fault scarp, a textbook line along the mountainside that geologists come specifically to read. Rebuilding is real but slow, and visiting is a form of aid the villages actively ask for.

Between legend and seismology there is superb walking: the Gola dell'Infernaccio's narrows lead to the hermitage of San Leonardo, rebuilt stone by stone over decades by a single determined friar; the 120-kilometre Grande Anello circles the whole massif; and Castelluccio's thermals make it one of Europe's great paragliding and hang-gliding sites. Wolves are long-established, chamois were reintroduced in the 2000s, and golden eagles hold most of the high valleys.

What's worth knowing before you go

There is no rail: Norcia is reached by bus from Spoleto, the Marche side via Amandola and Montefortino. During Fiorita weekends the Castelluccio road runs one-way traffic control from early morning — go midweek, or walk up from Forca di Presta. The Lago di Pilato walk from Foce di Montemonaco is steep, waterless and glorious; the lake often shrinks to two eyes by August, and the no-contact rule is enforced for the shrimp's sake.

The connoisseur's plate is lentil soup in a rebuilt Norcia norcineria after a day on the crest — Castelluccio lentils, the crop that paints the Fiorita, cooked a kilometre below where they grew.