This park stretches across the ridge of the Tosco-Romagnolo Apennines and it includes one of the largest and best preserved woodland areas in Italy with 85% of area covered by trees of over 36,000 hectares.
The heart of this park is covered by the Foreste Demaniali Casentinesi, a very old woodland area extraordinarily rich in flora and fauna. Solemn fir trees, fresh brooks and beautiful waterfalls surround the mystic atmosphere of places such as Camaldoli and La Verna, villages which in the past welcomed important religious people and thinkers. Literary men such as Dante and Ariosto celebrated these landscapes and deeply spiritual men like Saint Romualdo and St. Francis found refuge here.
The famous Acquacheta waterfall celebrated by Dante (Inferno – Canto XVI). In fact, Dante found refuge here, where the Fosso Aquacheta drops for 70 meters, during his exile from Florence; modern travellers can admire unusual glimpses of the nature of the Apennines.
The Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi, Monte Falterona e Campigna has an interesting fauna, probably the richest and most varied in the northern Apennines. The wolf is one of the mammals that has found a favourable habitat in this park and is now permanently and continuously present together with four types of ungulates: wild boar, deer, roe and fallow deer.
