The Park of Monte Cucco is an area rich in beauty and attractions.

Among paths, excursions, sports initiatives, caves, recreational and educational activities is the best place to spend days immersed in nature.

The Regional Natural Park of Monte Cucco, formed in 1995, includes 4 municipalities all lined up along the consular road Flaminia: Fossato di Vico, Sigillo, Costacciaro and Scheggia Pascelupo.

The area covers about 10,480 hectares, is totally included in the Umbria Region. Monte Cucco and its territory is striking for the variety of the natural environment, which is manifested by exceptional characteristics and a degree of conservation rarely found in other Apennine areas.

The extensive network of paths continuously updated and widespread, not too much elevation of the reliefs, the carriageways that lead up to the access points in altitude, the accommodation facilities of support and refreshment in the mountains, are elements that help to make every excursion quiet, safe, pleasant and instructive.

The landscape offered by the Monte Cucco Massif has a varied trend: withered valleys that chase each other with spires, pinnacles and terraces, with gullies and gorges, the millenary gorges that make it sour but also gentle and soft slopes with basins and valleys.

In this superb natural environment alternate suggestive woods of secular beech woods with high trunk and holm oaks that dominate cliffs and limestone walls. It is the environment that welcomes the "Mother of beeches", a beech, among the oldest in Italy, extended for 30 hectares at a share of 1000 m.s.l.m. with the presence of plants of beech Fagus Wild majestic, often accompanied by large specimens of holly Ilex Aquifolium.

Monte Cucco is one of the most frequented race fields by Volo Libero pilots (hang gliding and paragliding) from all over the world. It’s the place where national and international high-tech flying competitions are held. Sigillo is the Municipality where international competitions such as the "MONTE CUCCO TROPHY" are organized and held annually, with the participation of numerous foreign nationals.

Since 2012 the Cucco is also home to rallies of model airplanes radio controlled without engine that attract many fans of the sector from all over Italy.

In the Park of Monte Cucco you can also try your hand at trekking and mountain biking, along paths of great suggestion and canyoning increasingly practiced especially by young people, that finds in the Rio Freddo Gorge passages and thrilling descents with ancient sedimentary rocks and dug by the perennial and very cold stream.

Especially in summer there are many hikers who try their hand at the descent of the canyon of the Park, especially the Rio Freddo Gorge (over 3 km long and with a difference in height of 350 m) which is a real paradise for lovers of this young discipline of mountaineering.

The descent is facilitated and made safe by a series of artificial anchorages for the attachment and sliding of the progression ropes placed in place above each waterfall or rapid. The control and maintenance of these anchorages is constant.

It does not end here... The territory is also suitable for activities such as equestrian hiking, fishing, cross-country skiing and much more!

Natural attractions

An endless natural heritage, to be discovered:

• • • The caves of Monte Cucco
    • Gorge of the Rio Freddo
    • The Ravine of the Eagle Leap
    • Le Lecce
    • The Wall of the Liscarelle
    • Catria
    • Pian delle Macinare
    • "Cacuminal" meadows
    • Underground Quarries of Valdorbia (Scheggia)
    • Beech wood
    • Valle delle Prigioni
    • Paleontological Site of Valdorbia
    • and much more...

The caves

The Cave of Monte Cucco, located within the Regional Park of Monte Cucco, with its 30 kilometers of tunnels and beyond, and with a maximum depth of almost 1000 meters is one of the most important underground systems in Europe and certainly among the best known and studied in the world. The natural spectacle that until now could only be appreciated by expert speleologists, opens for about 800 meters of underground path to discover those who want to live a unique sensory experience, made of sounds, those of water that slowly digs the rock, of smells, those of the depth of the mountain, of images, those created by the internal limestone formations.

For more information, please visit: https://www.parcodelmontecucco.it