Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve covers about 1,000 hectares northeast of Rome, straddling the municipalities of Monterotondo, Mentana and Sant'Angelo Romano, between the Tiber Valley and the Cornicolani Mountains. Entry and use of the trails are free and open, the area has no gates and no closing hours, and the practical reference point for anyone coming from outside is the Welcome Area at Via Nomentana at km 21+200, number 320, the facility that serves as a common gateway to this reserve and to the nearby Nomentum Nature Reserve. The managing body is the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, which can be reached at 348 5212135 and 06 67663320 and at the mailbox direttoreareeprotette@cittametropolitanaroma.it. It is best to write or call first, because the opening of the visitor center follows the calendars of educational activities and not a fixed museum schedule. By car you arrive from Via Nomentana or Via Salaria in just under 40 minutes from the Grande Raccordo Anulare. By train you get off at Monterotondo, on the FL1 line, and from there you continue toward Castelchiodato. The trails are the ones mapped by the Italian Alpine Club with the numbers 436, 437, 438 and 439, plus the variants marked with letters, and they cross the best preserved stretch of woodland in the countryside north of the capital.

If you are looking for other green destinations within an hour of Rome, you will find an overview on the page of tourist attractions in Lazio.

Where the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve is located

Picture the map of Lazio: Rome in the center, the Tiber coming down from the north and bending west, and northeast of the city a group of modest limestone hills that don't exceed 600 meters and that nobody would call mountains if they didn't have an ancient name. They are the Cornicolani Mountains, and they owe that name to the pre-Roman city of Corniculum: the two hills of Montecelio seen from Rome draw two horns, and folk etymology did the rest. The reserve occupies the northwestern side of that group, where the reliefs lower and fray out toward the alluvial plain of the Tiber.

It is a border position, and it shows. To the west the ground drops to river terraces and the wheat fields that run along the Salaria. To the east the hills climb again toward Sant'Angelo Romano, perched at 400 meters on Monte Patulo, and farther still toward the mass of the Lucretili Mountains. In between, these 1,000 hectares of woods, pastures, arable fields and olive groves that ecologists call an agro-silvo-pastoral landscape and that a farmer from Sabina would simply call the countryside as it has always been.

The perimeter touches three municipalities. Monterotondo, 40,000 inhabitants on a hill at 165 meters looking over the Tiber valley, heir to the territory of ancient Sabine Eretum. Mentana, 22,000 inhabitants, heir to Nomentum. Sant'Angelo Romano, 5,000 inhabitants, the smallest and the most interesting from a geological point of view, because the Pozzo del Merro opens in its territory. None of the three towns is inside the reserve: the reserve is what is left in between, and that has a precise historical logic that we will see later.

The border with the Nomentum Nature Reserve

To the southwest the Macchia di Gattaceca grazes the other protected area managed by the Metropolitan City, the Nomentum Nature Reserve, which covers about 827 hectares between Mentana and Fonte Nuova. The two reserves share the managing body, the visitor center and part of the trail network, and people arriving from the city often treat them as a single system. They are different, though: Nomentum is more fragmented, more agricultural, more interwoven with built-up areas. Gattaceca keeps the most compact patches of woods and the more remarkable geological heritage.

The Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve in brief: the facts you need

Establishment: Lazio regional law number 29 of October 6, 1997, the measure that in one stroke created a dozen protected areas in Lazio. Area: about 1,000 hectares. Municipalities: Monterotondo, Mentana, Sant'Angelo Romano. Managing body: Metropolitan City of Rome Capital. Elevation: between about 150 and 400 meters. Entry: free. Marked trails: four main ones and 11 variants, plus two long-distance routes that cross the area. Minimum time for a visit that makes sense: three hours. Time to do all of it unhurried: a full day, and you won't have anything left over.

The fact that surprises anyone reading these figures for the first time is the distance from Rome. From the Colosseum to the Castelchiodato junction it is 35 kilometers. In a city where people book a weekend in Abruzzo to see a real forest, having 1,000 hectares of oak woods half an hour by car from the Raccordo is a luxury that Romans, in the overwhelming majority, don't realize they own.

How to get to the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

By car

The most convenient route is the Nomentana, State Road 22, which leaves from Porta Pia and heads straight northeast. You pass Fonte Nuova, skirt Mentana, and at kilometer 21 plus 200 meters, at number 320, you meet the Welcome Area that works as the gateway to the park for both reserves. From there the signs lead to the different entrances. The alternative is the Salaria to Monterotondo and then the provincial road to Castelchiodato, which enters the woods from the north side.

A warning worth more than any description of the scenery: if you type the name of the reserve into a GPS navigator, it will take you to a generic point in the middle of the fields. Enter instead the address of the Welcome Area, or Via di Castelchiodato in Monterotondo, or Via Basento in Mentana, which are the three real entrances to the numbered trails. Parking is always and only along the road, on dirt, with no equipped areas. On sunny spring days the roadside of Via di Gattaceca fills up, and whoever arrives after 10 parks far away.

By train

Monterotondo has a railway station opened in October 1867, served by the regional line FL1, the one that connects Orte to Fiumicino airport via Tiburtina, Ostiense and Trastevere. From Roma Tiburtina the trip takes a little over 20 minutes and trains are frequent on Sundays too. From the station, though, there are still a handful of kilometers to the woods: you need a local bus, a taxi or a bicycle. Those traveling by road bike or gravel bike find the best combination here, because the road to Castelchiodato has little traffic and climbs with gentle gradients.

By bus

Intercity coaches connect Rome to Mentana and Monterotondo, with departures from the regional transport terminals. Schedules change between weekdays and holidays and thin out quite a lot in the summer months: check them on the carrier's website before leaving, because a missed connection on a Sunday afternoon means being stuck on foot until evening.

Access to the trails

There are three entrances that matter. Via Basento, on the Mentana side, from which trail 437 and variant 437C start. Via di Castelchiodato, on the Monterotondo side, which is the northern end of route 438. Via Colle Giochetto, from which the 436 loop of Bosco Nardi branches off. All three are marked by wooden signs with the logo of the Metropolitan City and the numbering of the Italian Alpine Club.

The four wooded cores of the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The double name of the park is not a bureaucratic whim: it describes the situation on the ground exactly. There is no single, continuous forest. There are four separate patches of woodland divided by cultivated fields and pastures, and the reserve was designed to stitch them together. The four cores are the Macchia del Barco, the Bosco di Gattaceca, Monte San Francesco and Bosco Nardi.

The Bosco di Gattaceca

It is the largest and the densest, the one that gives the reserve its name and that on its own carries the load of weekend visitors. It covers the slope between Monterotondo and Castelchiodato, the terrain is almost flat, and the oak wood has the structure of an aged coppice: that is, for centuries it was cut in turns to make firewood and charcoal, and in recent decades it has been left to grow. The result is multiple shoots starting from the same stump, an understory that is light in spring and dark in high summer, and a few Turkey oak standards left as seed trees that by now have the bearing of a high-forest tree.

The place name, in local pronunciation, wavers between Gattaceca and Gattacieca, and popular explanations of its origin circulate that have no documentary foundation: I leave them where they are. What is documented is the collective use of the woods, managed for generations by the Università Agraria di Castelchiodato, one of those old-regime bodies that administer the civic rights of wood gathering and grazing on behalf of the population. That is the reason this patch of oak wood survived while everything around it was being cleared: a wood in collective use gets cut, but it is not sold and not turned into arable land.

The Macchia del Barco

Smaller, more fragmented, closer to the Salaria. The name gives away the origin: barco, in the vocabulary of the Lazio fiefs, indicates a lord's fenced hunting reserve, the park in the English sense of the word. Here the forest area is reduced to a few tens of hectares per body, and the agricultural matrix dominates. It is of lesser natural interest than Gattaceca, and in fact the official trail network barely touches it. It is still valuable as a historical document of the landscape: it says precisely where the baronial woods ended and where the peasants' land began.

Monte San Francesco

The relief that closes the reserve to the east, in the direction of Sant'Angelo Romano. Trail 437, the Yellow, ends at the Pozzo di San Francesco, and the Franciscan place name in the area points to a hermit presence of which place-name traces remain more than monuments. Here the ground rises, the limestone outcrops, and the vegetation changes toward the heat-loving type: the downy oak takes over from the Turkey oak, and the holm oak and the Judas tree appear.

Bosco Nardi

The botanical jewel of the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve, and the reason a flora enthusiast comes all the way up here. It is a compact core, crossed by the 436 loop, where there are stands of wild orchids protected by the CITES convention. The blooms concentrate between April and May, change from year to year depending on the winter rains, and ask to be photographed from the trail. Picking an orchid here is forbidden by the reserve's regulations and stupid from a practical point of view: these species depend on symbiotic fungi in the soil and wilt in half an hour.

A curiosity about the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

Inside the perimeter of the reserve, in the territory of Sant'Angelo Romano, opens a funnel-shaped chasm that the locals have always known and that the international scientific community discovered only in the last 20 years: the Pozzo del Merro. On the surface it is a collapse sinkhole about 80 meters deep, with walls covered in dense vegetation and a small lake at the bottom about 30 meters wide. It looks like a natural well like many others in the limestone Apennines. It isn't.

That little lake is only the water surface of a flooded cavity that goes down vertically into the limestone. The first serious investigations were carried out in the 1940s by the geologist Aldo Giacomo Segre, who sensed the karst nature of the phenomenon. But the measurement that went around the world came in March 2002, when a wire-guided vehicle named Prometeo, lowered into the well by the fire brigade, reached a depth of 392 meters below the level of the lake. At that depth the cable had run out: the robot had used up its operational range, it had not touched the bottom.

This is the point that makes the Pozzo del Merro an authentic curiosity and not a brochure record. There is a flooded cavity 35 kilometers from Rome whose real depth nobody, to this day, knows. The international rankings of flooded sinkholes place it among the very top in the world, second only to the Hranice Abyss in the Czech Republic, and its position in the ranking depends entirely on the fact that no instrument has yet managed to go lower. The mechanism that dug it is what geologists call geothermal hypercarsism: deep waters enriched with fluids of geothermal origin that attack the limestone from the bottom up, instead of from the top down like rain.

In 2007 the freediver Stefano Makula went down into the cavity, reaching 48 meters in a karst environment with side branches. The rocks the well passes through belong to a tropical carbonate platform of Jurassic age, the same one that forms the backbone of half of central Italy. The Pozzo del Merro cannot be visited: access to the rim of the sinkhole is regulated and dives are reserved for authorized scientific operations. From the trail you can take in the depression, the anomalous vegetation that lines it, the particular silence that surrounds it. Imagination provides the rest, and that is already a great deal.

The relict forest of the Roman countryside: the vegetation of the Macchia di Gattaceca

To understand what you are looking at, you need a piece of context. The countryside north of Rome, until the early Middle Ages, was covered by a continuous forest of deciduous oaks. Then came transhumant grazing, the city's need for firewood, land reclamation, the agricultural mechanization of the 20th century. What remains today is fragments, and the Macchia di Gattaceca is one of the most substantial. Every tree you see along the 438 is a descendant of that forest.

The Turkey oak and the Hungarian oak, the two ruling oaks

The dominant formation is a deciduous oak wood managed largely as coppice, with the Turkey oak as the guide species. The Turkey oak, Quercus cerris, is recognized by its broad leaf with deep, irregular lobes, by its dark bark with deep fissures that are reddish at the bottom, and by its acorn whose cup is covered with long, curled, almost hairy scales. Alongside the Turkey oak, the Hungarian oak, Quercus frainetto, appears locally, a Balkan oak that in Italy finds in Lazio one of its main ranges: larger leaf, more lobed, often gathered in a tuft at the tip of the twigs.

The combined presence of Turkey oak and Hungarian oak is not a detail for fussy botanists. It defines a precise forest type, the submontane Turkey oak wood of inland Lazio, and it is the reason the reserve was established in 1997 together with the region's other areas of botanical value. Woods like this, at the gates of a European capital, are not many in Italy.

The middle layer and the understory

Under the oaks develops a layer of smaller trees that carries a good part of the site's biodiversity: Oriental hornbeam, field maple, manna ash. Then the shrubs, which in spring turn the woods into a flowering tangle: hawthorn, cornelian cherry, privet, blackthorn. At ground level the butcher's broom forms spiny cushions that persist all year, and above it, between February and April, come the blooms that are worth the trip by themselves: white anemones in broad patches and cyclamens.

Where the ground drains better, on the limestone humps and the south-facing slopes, the composition changes toward the heat-loving type. The Turkey oak recedes, and the downy oak advances with its leaf hairy on the underside, the Judas tree that in April bursts into pink flowers directly on the branches, and the holm oak, the only significant evergreen in a wood that is otherwise entirely bare in winter.

The storax and the other protected species

Three protected plant species give the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve a botanical weight greater than its area. The first is the storax, Styrax officinalis, a shrub or small tree with white, drooping, bell-shaped flowers, which has a very restricted distribution in Italy, concentrated precisely in the Tiburtini, Lucretili and Cornicolani sector. Finding it here means being at one of the few Italian stations of a plant that elsewhere is Middle Eastern. The second is the narrow-leaved arum. The third is Linaria purpurea, an Apennine endemic with spikes of violet flowers that sprout among the stones.

The wild orchids of Bosco Nardi

The chapter that brings nature photographers from half of Italy. In some areas of the reserve, and in particular at Bosco Nardi, wild orchids grow, all included in the appendices of the CITES convention. The good period runs from the end of March to the first half of May, with the species succeeding one another over the weeks. You need knees willing to get dirty and a macro telephoto lens. What you don't need, and is not allowed, is to push aside the surrounding vegetation to clean up the frame.

The seasons of the woods

March and April are the months of the flowering understory and of days long enough to allow two trails in a row. May brings the closing of the canopy and a filtered green light that is splendid to experience and very hard to photograph. From June to September the oak wood becomes a refuge from the heat: the temperature under the canopy drops by several degrees compared with the open field, and in August the difference is that between a stroll and an endurance test. October and November are the best season of all: colors, mushrooms, clear air, and nobody around. From December to February the woods are bare, the mud on the trails is real and has to be factored in, but the visibility between the trunks lets you read the morphology of the terrain as at no other time of the year.

Something nobody tells you about the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

That this is not a public reserve in the sense that the urban parks of Rome are. The reserve is a protection restriction laid over property that is in very large part private and collective: farms, lands of civic use administered by the Università Agraria di Castelchiodato, experimental farms of public agricultural research institutes. The protected perimeter includes inhabited houses, stables, tractors at work, guard dogs and electrified fences for livestock.

The practical consequence is precise and no brochure writes it: in the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve you don't walk wherever you please. You walk on the trails numbered by the Italian Alpine Club, which the regulations identify precisely because they run entirely over public areas and along routes with a verified right of way. Leaving the marked track, in this reserve more than in others, means entering someone's field.

The second consequence is cultural and more interesting. These woods survived not because someone protected them, but because for centuries they were useful to everyone: wood gathering, grazing in the woods, acorns for the pigs, charcoal. Civic use worked as a conservation restriction long before the word conservation existed. When in 1997 the Lazio Region put its signature on the founding law, it certified a balance that the peasants of Sabina had already built on their own. The mosaic landscape in front of you, with patches of woods alternating with pastures and arable land, is not untouched nature: it is the portrait of a peasant economic system that stopped working only recently.

Third thing, less philosophical and very concrete: in autumn, people go mushroom hunting in these woods. Picking is subject to regional rules and local regulations, requires the permit provided by the Lazio Region and has to be checked before leaving. Here you meet a full basket and a missing permit with some regularity.

The advice I give you for visiting the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

Go on a weekday morning in late March, and start with trail 437 from Via Basento, on the Mentana side. Then, at the fork, take variant 437C, the one the Italian Alpine Club has named the Sentiero delle Grotte: 1.6 kilometers, half an hour of walking, 45 meters of elevation gain and 25 of descent, tourist-level difficulty. It is the stretch that concentrates the best of what this reserve has to offer, and if you have three hours and don't know how to spend them, spend them here.

The reason for a weekday is practical. On weekends the Macchia di Gattaceca is the big park of Monterotondo, Mentana and Fonte Nuova put together: families, groups of walkers, mountain bikes, dogs off leash that shouldn't be. It isn't unpleasant, it is simply a different experience. On a Tuesday morning in March you can walk in these woods for an hour without meeting anyone, and the call of the green woodpecker can be heard from 100 meters away.

The second piece of advice concerns shoes, and it deserves insistence because too many people ruin their day. The trails are classified T, tourist, and the classification is correct as far as slopes and orientation are concerned. It says nothing, though, about the surface. On limestone ground with a clay cover, after rain the trail becomes a skating rink, and sneakers with a smooth sole are the recipe for a fall. A low hiking boot with a lugged sole, and the matter is closed.

Third: bring your water from home. In the reserve there are no fountains safe for human consumption and no refreshment points. The nearest bars are in the towns, and in the towns on Sunday they close early. Two liters per person in summer is no exaggeration.

Last, and here I give a firm opinion that not everyone shares: don't try to see everything at once. This reserve has 15 marked routes, most of them short and connected to each other, and the temptation to fit them into a single day is strong. It is wrong. The Macchia di Gattaceca gives its best to those who stop: to those who sit for 20 minutes on a log looking at the understory, to those who wait for a jay to stop protesting and show itself again. Do two in the morning, eat in Sant'Angelo Romano, come back another time for the others.

The Italian Alpine Club trails in the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The marked network counts 15 mapped routes, four main ones identified by a color and 11 variants marked by a letter. All of them run over public areas and are shown on the hiking map of the reserve, which can also be downloaded in a georeferenced version. Here is what they are really like.

CAI 436, the Sentiero Celeste

The Bosco Nardi loop, and the most beautiful of the four if your interest is botanical. It starts and ends on Via Colle Giochetto, measures 2.1 kilometers, with 90 meters of elevation gain and as much descent, an hour and a quarter of walking, difficulty T. It is the only true loop in the reserve, so it requires no shuttles and no retracing your steps, and it crosses the sector of the wild orchids. In April it is the route to do, period.

CAI 437, the Sentiero Giallo

2.9 kilometers, 50 meters of elevation gain, 45 minutes, difficulty T. It starts from Via Basento in Mentana, at the crossing with trail 438, and ends at the Pozzo di San Francesco. It is the backbone of the western sector and the junction point of three variants: the 437A, which connects it to the 439B. The 437B, a connector of a quarter of an hour that rejoins the 437 itself. And the 437C, the Sentiero delle Grotte.

CAI 437C, the Sentiero delle Grotte

1.6 kilometers, half an hour, 45 meters of climbing and 25 of descent, difficulty T, starting at low elevation on the side of Via Basento. The name tells its vocation: it is the variant that brings you into contact with the surface karst phenomena, the depressions and openings in the limestone that dot this sector. If I had to name a single route for someone short on time, I would name this one.

CAI 438, the Percorso Blu

3.1 kilometers, the longest of the four main ones, 50 minutes, 15 meters of elevation gain and 25 of descent: practically flat. It connects Via di Castelchiodato, in Monterotondo, with Via Basento, in Mentana, and it is the traverse that crosses the heart of the Bosco di Gattaceca. Difficulty T. It has four variants: the 438A, a connector of five minutes toward the 437. The 438B, 35 minutes from the entrance on the provincial road. The 438C, a quarter of an hour on Via di Gattaceca. And the 438D, 10 minutes of connection with the 438C. Since it is a traverse and not a loop, it has to be organized with two cars or walked out and back, in which case it becomes a little over six kilometers.

CAI 439, the Sentiero Rosso

The shortest: 900 meters, 30 meters of elevation gain, a quarter of an hour, difficulty T. It starts from the locality Piazza di Spagna di Gattaceca, which is a rural place name and has nothing to do with the Roman staircase, and ends at the crossing with the 439B loop. The latter is the real stroll of the sector: an hour of walking on a closed route.

CAI 484, from Montelibretti to Monterotondo

The long-distance route that crosses the reserve from east to west: four and a half hours, difficulty E, that is hiking and no longer tourist. It leaves the protected perimeter on both sides and requires serious logistical organization, with two vehicles or a carefully planned use of public transport. Those who walk regularly will find it the most honest way to read the landscape of the Cornicolani Mountains in its entirety.

Via di Francesco, third stage

The devotional route that links La Verna to Rome crosses this territory with its third stage on the approach to the capital, classified E. The pilgrims heading down toward St. Peter's therefore pass close to the reserve, and in the weeks of April and September you meet them with their backpacks and their credentials. It is a fact that almost no local visitor knows and that changes the way you look at these trails: they are not just recreational routes designed yesterday, they follow a ridge and valley road network that is centuries old.

Another well-known fact, yet rarely cited

That the subsoil of this reserve is as full of holes as a sponge, and that karst here is not an accessory of the landscape but its load-bearing structure. Everyone knows it, in the sense that every sign says so. Almost nobody stops to understand what it means.

The substrate is limestone of marine origin, deposited when a tropical carbonate platform extended over this part of Italy. Rainwater, slightly acidic because it is loaded with carbon dioxide, dissolves the calcium carbonate along the fractures of the rock. Over hundreds of thousands of years those fractures become conduits, the conduits become tunnels, the ceilings of the tunnels give way and sinkholes appear on the surface: closed basins without outflow, which the farmer calls plains because they are the only flat spots in the middle of the slope. In the Grotta Cerqueta wood, an area of 30 or 35 hectares on a limestone hill, there are three of them along with a cave.

Then there are the swallow holes, the points where a surface ditch disappears into the ground and continues underground. And there are the so-called sventatori, the name locals use for the openings from which air comes out: in winter they smoke, because the inside air is warmer than the outside air and condenses as it comes out. In summer they blow cool. They are the unmistakable sign of a system of cavities that are connected and still active.

The consequence that nobody ever connects is hydrological. In a karst territory the rain doesn't run on the surface, it slips in. That is why in the Macchia di Gattaceca you will not find torrents, streams, little waterfalls, nothing of what you would expect from a wood of 1,000 hectares. The water is there, a great deal of it, but it runs tens and tens of meters under your feet, and resurfaces far away, at the springs of the valley floor. The Pozzo del Merro is the spectacular window opened onto that submerged world. The sinkholes and the sventatori are the discreet windows, the ones you walk past without noticing.

A recommendation that follows from all this: the karst cavities of this reserve are not equipped for visits, the entrances are not secured and some open in the woods without any protection. Looking at them from the trail is fascinating, going into them without equipment and without caving expertise is an excellent way to end up in the newspapers. Anyone who really wants to go down should contact the caving groups of Lazio, who have been working in this sector for decades.

The fauna of the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The animal population of these woods has gone through a difficult century: hunting, habitat fragmentation, roads, building expansion of the towns. What remains is nonetheless remarkable for an area half an hour from the Grande Raccordo Anulare.

The mammals

The fox is the most constant presence and the easiest to document, even just from the prints in the mud of the trails. The badger frequents the woods and leaves unmistakable traces, the latrines dug a few meters from the den. Among the small carnivores, the beech marten and the weasel have been reported. The porcupine, which at night walks the edges of the woods looking for bulbs and tubers, leaves its fallen quills along the tracks: picking one up is the elementary satisfaction of every child brought here for the first time. The wild boar is present and increasing, as everywhere in Lazio, and its rooting upsets whole stretches of understory. The squirrel and the dormouse complete the picture.

The birds

The group that pays back the most those who come equipped. There are three woodpeckers: the green woodpecker, whose loud laugh is the soundtrack of the Bosco di Gattaceca, the spotted woodpecker and the wryneck, which has the woodpecker's family but not its looks. The jay is the sentinel of the woods and will give you away long before you see it. In spring the cuckoo arrives, and its call can be heard from a remarkable distance. Among the common passerines, finches, blackbirds and goldfinches. In the farmland strips and open edges, the hoopoe with its crest, the thrush, the song thrush, the stonechat perched on the fence posts and the hooded crow.

In recent years there have been sightings of bee-eaters, spectacular colonial birds tied for nesting to sandy walls and crumbly scarps: a new presence for this sector, probably favored by changes in the banks and quarries of the Tiber valley floor.

The birds of prey

Among the diurnal ones, the buzzard and the kestrel are resident and nest in the trees. The buzzard is recognized by its slow circling flight and its mewing, the kestrel by its "Holy Spirit" hover, the motionless pause in the air over the field before the dive. Among the nocturnal ones there are the little owl, the tawny owl, the scops owl with its monotonous whistle on summer nights and the barn owl.

The barn owl deserves a note that most visitors ignore. This bird of prey regurgitates pellets, that is compact balls of fur and indigestible bones of its prey. Analyzing the pellets collected under the roosts makes it possible to reconstruct precisely which small mammals live in the surrounding territory, species by species, without capturing a single animal. It is one of the least invasive and most effective monitoring methods that exist, and in reserves like this one it supplies data on the smaller fauna that no other approach could collect.

Reptiles, amphibians and invertebrates

In the woods and on the dry-stone walls you come across lizards and geckos. Among the snakes, the western whip snake, fast and completely harmless, the four-lined snake and the grass snake have been reported. The presence of the tortoise has been reported. Among the amphibians tied to the pools and damp environments of the cavities appears the spectacled salamander, an Italian endemic of great conservation value.

Invertebrates remain the least studied chapter, and precisely for this reason the most open to surprises: in the deep waters of the Pozzo del Merro karst system a crustacean new to science has been described, Niphargus cornicolanus, which carries the Cornicolani Mountains in its name. Among the insects of the woods the Jersey tiger moth has been found, a species protected in many European countries because human activity compromises its habitat.

Archaeology in the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The historical evidence inside the protected perimeter runs from prehistory to the Middle Ages, and the most significant site is at the locality of Tor Mancina, where excavations have brought to light the archaeological area of the Nomentum-Eretum road: about 140 meters of ancient road paving, the remains of a Roman villa and a burial ground of the early imperial period.

140 meters of paving don't seem like much until you walk on them. That road linked two centers of the Tiber Sabina that are worth telling apart. Nomentum, the ancestor of Mentana, was according to Dionysius of Halicarnassus a colony of Alba Longa, therefore Latin in Sabine territory, while Pliny the Elder gave it as Sabine in every respect: the contradiction between the ancient sources has never been resolved. Eretum, the ancestor of the territory of Monterotondo, was a Sabine city mentioned in Virgil's Aeneid, which ancient authors placed at the 18th mile of the Salaria road.

Between the two ran this connecting road, which crossed exactly the hills where you walk today. Nomentum prospered on wine, which the Romans appreciated, and on a thermal station, the Aquae Labanae, located near Grotta Marozza. It was a Roman municipality after the submission of 338 BC, a bishop's seat already in AD 408, and survived until the brief Lombard occupation of 741, after which the population moved to a more defensible site, giving rise to Mentana. The last mention of the ancient name dates to the year 800.

Anyone who wants to go deeper into this chapter will find an interesting point of comparison in the Marcigliana, the other large reserve of the Roman countryside north of the city, where the agro preserves traces of ancient roads and settlements with the same logic. Farther north, along the Tiber, the Nazzano Tevere Farfa reserve completes the picture of the protected landscapes of the Tiber Sabina.

The right photo to take at the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The photograph that really gives back this place is not the panorama. And it is good to say so right away, because anyone who arrives with the idea of a viewpoint is disappointed: the Macchia di Gattaceca is a flat, closed wood, and the broad views over the Cornicolani Mountains and the Tiber valley open up from the access roads and the cultivated edges, not from inside.

The right photo is the wood seen from below, backlit, in the first three weeks of April. Let me explain how to take it. You enter from the 438 with the sun still low, an hour after dawn, when the light crosses the oak wood horizontally instead of raining down from above. At that moment the new leaves of the Turkey oak, still translucent and not yet leathery, light up in an acid green that no filter reproduces. You lie down, literally, on the line of the trail, frame upward putting a trunk in the foreground on the left or right of the frame, and underexpose by a couple of thirds of a stop so as not to burn the leaves. Stop down to f/11 to get the star on the sun filtering between the branches.

The second photo, the one nobody takes and that tells the story of the reserve better than any other, is the mosaic. You need a raised point on the edge, from the Castelchiodato road or from the humps toward Monte San Francesco, and a medium telephoto lens at around 130 millimeters, which compresses the planes. You frame a band of dark woods, above a plowed or wheat field, above another patch of woods. Three horizontal bands. It is the exact portrait of the agro-silvo-pastoral landscape, and it is an image that explains in one stroke why this territory was protected.

For the orchids of Bosco Nardi, in April: macro, low tripod, a day without wind, the background as far away as possible to clean it up with blur. No direct flash, which flattens the petals. And above all, no knees on the grass around the plant.

The moment to avoid is noon in July: closed canopy, impossible contrasts, patches of light and shadow that no exposure holds together. If you go in summer, go at dawn or in the last hour of light.

Some important events that happened here in history

This territory witnessed two episodes that history textbooks tell in a few lines and that here, on the ground, take on a different substance.

The meeting of Charlemagne and Leo III, year 800

On November 23 of the year 800, at Nomentum, Pope Leo III went out to meet Charlemagne, who was coming down toward Rome. A month and two days later, on Christmas Day, in St. Peter's, that same pope crowned that same king emperor of the Romans. The last mention of the ancient name of Nomentum in the sources coincides precisely with this meeting: the city that had seen the fine wines of the Sabina and the imperial baths pass through takes its leave of written history by welcoming the man who would refound the idea of empire in the West. You are walking a few hundred meters from where all this happened.

The Garibaldi campaign of October and November 1867

67 years of Risorgimento history passed through here in two weeks. On October 26, 1867, Giuseppe Garibaldi entered Monterotondo, after a fight that cost considerable losses to both sides, and had Porta Romana burned, which has been called Porta Garibaldi ever since. It was the Roma o morte campaign, begun in September in the Viterbo area with the goal of taking the capital from the Papal State.

On November 3, as the Garibaldian column was moving from Monterotondo toward Tivoli, the papal troops and the French expeditionary corps intercepted it at Mentana. The volunteers, who had come from 216 Italian municipalities and from foreign nations including Hungary and Russia, were defeated. The battle of Mentana closed the campaign and postponed the taking of Rome by three years. The national museum of the Garibaldian Campaign of the Agro Romano, in Mentana, preserves the memory of those days and is one of the facilities linked to the system of protected areas of the Metropolitan City.

The detail that makes an impression, when you walk here, is geographic. The Garibaldian column passed between Monterotondo and Mentana, that is exactly through the territory that is today the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve. The same dirt roads, the same ditches, the same patches of oak wood. The woods, in those November days, were as bare as you find them in December.

The explorations of the Pozzo del Merro

The third event is scientific and very recent. Between the 1940s, with the investigations of Aldo Giacomo Segre, and March 2002, with the descent of the wire-guided vehicle Prometeo to 392 meters, the Pozzo del Merro went from the status of local curiosity to that of an international case study on hypercarsism. In 2007 the freedive of Stefano Makula to 48 meters added a sporting chapter. The bottom, to this day, has not been reached.

Who has passed through the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The question, for a wood, seems out of place. It isn't: this territory has been crossed, inhabited and owned by figures who carry considerable weight in the history books.

Martial and Seneca, landowners

The territory of Nomentum hosted the villas of illustrious Romans, among them Seneca and Martial. The epigram poet dedicated repeated verses to his Nomentan property, making it the symbol of retired country life as opposed to the din of the city, and citing the Nomentan wine that came from it. Seneca, the Stoic philosopher and tutor of Nero, also had properties in these parts. The hills you see from the edge of the woods are those.

Charlemagne

On November 23 of the year 800 the king of the Franks passed through this territory, receiving the homage of Pope Leo III. A month later he was emperor.

The Orsini, the Capocci, the Borghese

The castle of Nomentum, that is of Mentana, belonged in the 10th and 11th centuries to the powerful Roman family of the Crescenzi, then passed to the Capocci, then to the Orsini in the mid-1300s, and finally to the Borghese princes in 1655. In Monterotondo the baronial palace of the Orsini, later the Barberini, preserves frescoes by Giacinto Calandrucci, by the Fleming Paul Bril and by Girolamo Siciolante. The original tower collapsed in the Avezzano earthquake of 1915 and was rebuilt.

Federico Cesi, the founder of the Lincei

The name that gives this corner of the Sabina an unexpected scientific dignity. Federico Cesi, born in Rome on February 26, 1585, and died in Acquasparta on August 1, 1630, founded in 1603 the Accademia dei Lincei, the oldest scientific academy in the world still active, together with Johannes van Heeck, Francesco Stelluti and Anastasio De Filiis. He coined the term telescope for Galileo's instrument, welcomed Galileo into the Academy in 1611 and supported him in his clash with the ecclesiastical authorities. At Sant'Angelo Romano the Cesi succeeded the Orsini at the end of the 1500s, and in 1612 Pope Paul V raised the fief to a principality precisely in favor of Federico Cesi. The founder of the Lincei was therefore, to all effects, lord of the hills that close this reserve to the east.

Giuseppe Garibaldi

From October 26 to November 3, 1867, the general crossed this territory with his column of volunteers, from Monterotondo conquered to Mentana lost. It is the most recent and most dramatic historical passage, and it has left in the two towns place names, monuments and a national museum.

The Welcome Area and the relationship with the Nomentum Nature Reserve

The official entrance gate of the system is the Welcome Area at Via Nomentana at kilometer 21 plus 200 meters, number 320. The facility serves both the Nomentum Nature Reserve and the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve, and works as a visitor center, information point and base for the environmental education activities aimed at schools, associations and citizens.

It is worth understanding what it really is: not a museum with a ticket office and continuous hours, but an operations base where training programs on the management of ecosystems and the protection of nature are scheduled. Anyone who wants a guided visit, a workshop for a class or simply the updated hiking map should call first and agree on a time. Showing up without warning on a November afternoon almost certainly means finding the door closed.

The Nomentum reserve covers about 827 hectares and includes Bosco Valle Cavallara, Bosco Mancini and Bosco Santa Lucia between the Nomentana and the Palombarese, Bosco Spallette and Bosco Pascolaretto toward Quarto Conca and Selva dei Cavalieri, the Parco Trentani between Mentana and Fonte Nuova, the archaeological area of Monte d'Oro, part of the Casali di Mentana, the historic center of the town and the agricultural area of Monte Pizzuto. It is an even more fragmented mosaic than that of Gattaceca, and for this reason harder to visit in a linear way.

The system of protected areas of the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital also includes other linked facilities: the environmental education laboratory of Mentana, the protohistoric and natural history museum of Sant'Angelo Romano, the national museum of the Garibaldian Campaign of the Agro Romano. Anyone organizing a full day can fit in woods in the morning and a museum in the afternoon, checking the opening times first.

The Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve with children

It is one of the best destinations in Lazio for a first hike with small children. There are three reasons: the elevation changes are negligible, the main routes last between a quarter of an hour and an hour and a quarter, and the woods constantly offer something to look at half a meter off the ground.

The route to choose is the 436 loop of Bosco Nardi: 2.1 kilometers, an hour and a quarter with stops, and the fact that it is a loop avoids the worst of arguments, the one about let's turn back. Alternatively the 437B variant, a quarter of an hour, for very small children or for a first taste.

Things to get them to look for: porcupine quills fallen along the track, Turkey oak acorns with their curled cups, prints in the mud near the pools, the round holes of woodpeckers on dead trunks, the butcher's broom leaves that look like leaves but are flattened branches. The stroller won't get through: the surface is dirt and uneven in several places, so you need a baby carrier backpack.

A rule to explain before setting off and to enforce: you don't leave the trail. It is not adult pedantry, it is the practical consequence of what was written above about private property and unprotected karst cavities.

Accessibility of the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

It has to be said frankly: the reserve is not equipped for visits in a wheelchair. The trails are on natural surface, dirt and partly grassy, with exposed roots and stretches that become muddy after rain. There are no boardwalks, draining walkways or certified routes for users with reduced mobility. The least hostile route is the 438, which has almost no elevation change, but the surface remains that of a forest road.

Anyone with specific needs would do well to contact the managing body before setting out, because the conditions of the trails change with the seasons and with maintenance, and an assessment made over the phone by someone who works there is worth more than any generic description. There are no restrooms along the routes.

When to go to the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

From mid-March to mid-May is the queen season: flowering understory, orchids at Bosco Nardi, canopy still open and letting the light through, perfect temperatures. October and November are the second choice and in some ways the best of all, because the woods light up with colors, the air is clear and the visitors can be counted on your fingers.

Summer works only at the right hours. Under the canopy of a closed Turkey oak wood the temperature drops noticeably compared with the open field, and a walk at eight in the morning in July is very pleasant. The same walk at two in the afternoon is a mistake. Winter is the season of whites and grays, of readable trunks and of mud: gaiters or waterproof boots, and no hurry.

A note about the weekend that I repeat because it is the most useful of all: on Saturday and Sunday, from March to June, the Macchia di Gattaceca is crowded. Anyone who can come on a weekday finds a different place, and that is not just a figure of speech.

What to see around the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

Within half an hour by car there is material to fill a whole weekend. In Sant'Angelo Romano the Orsini Cesi castle dominates the town from the 400 meters of Monte Patulo: bought and restored by the municipality in 1989, it hosts an archaeological museum, and the church of Santa Maria e San Biagio from 1759 preserves works attributed to leading masters. In Monterotondo the Orsini Barberini palace with its frescoes and the historic center on the hill. In Mentana the national museum of the Garibaldian Campaign.

Widening the radius a little brings you into two different worlds. To the east the Lucretili Mountains and Monte Gennaro offer real hiking, the kind with elevation changes. Lower down, on the Aniene, the Monte Catillo Nature Reserve looks down on Tivoli and its two famous villas, starting with Hadrian's Villa. To the north the deep Sabina, with the Farfa Abbey and the Farfa Gorges. To the west, beyond the Tiber, the Veio Park and the Sorbo valley.

Anyone who stays inside the Raccordo and is looking for urban woods has the Monte Mario Reserve and the Insugherata: two reserves that tell, on a smaller scale, the same story as this one, that is the survival of patches of forest inside a transformed territory.

Frequently asked questions about the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

Where is the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve located?

The Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve is located northeast of Rome, on the Cornicolani Mountains, in the territories of Monterotondo, Mentana and Sant'Angelo Romano. It covers about 1,000 hectares at an elevation between 150 and 400 meters.

How much does it cost to enter the reserve?

Entering the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve costs nothing, because access to the trails is free, with no ticket offices or turnstiles. Any activities organized by the visitor center, educational workshops and guided visits follow their own conditions, to be agreed with the managing body.

How do you get to the reserve from Rome?

To reach the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve from Rome, the easiest route is the Nomentana, State Road 22 that leaves from Porta Pia. At kilometer 21 plus 200 meters, number 320, you meet the Welcome Area that works as the gateway to the park. The alternative is the Salaria to Monterotondo.

What is the Pozzo del Merro inside the reserve?

The Pozzo del Merro is a funnel-shaped chasm that opens in the territory of Sant'Angelo Romano, inside the perimeter of the reserve: a collapse sinkhole about 80 meters deep, with walls covered in dense vegetation and a small lake at the bottom about 30 meters wide, discovered by the international scientific community only in the last 20 years even though it has always been known to the locals.

Is the reserve suitable for an outing with children?

The Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve is one of the best destinations in Lazio for a first hike with small children, because the elevation changes are negligible and the main routes last between a quarter of an hour and an hour and a quarter. The recommended route is the 436 loop of Bosco Nardi, 2.1 kilometers long.

Is the reserve wheelchair accessible?

The reserve is not equipped for visits in a wheelchair: the trails are on natural surface, dirt and partly grassy, with exposed roots and stretches that become muddy after rain. There are no boardwalks or draining walkways. The least hostile route is trail 438, which has almost no elevation change but a dirt surface all the same.

When is the best time to visit the reserve?

From mid-March to mid-May is the best season to visit the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve, with the flowering understory and the orchids at Bosco Nardi. October and November are the second choice, when the woods light up with colors and the visitors can be counted on your fingers.

What is there to see near the reserve?

Near the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve, in Sant'Angelo Romano, is the Orsini Cesi castle, which dominates the town from the 400 meters of Monte Patulo and hosts an archaeological museum, while in Monterotondo you can visit the Orsini Barberini palace with its frescoes.

Guided visits and accompaniment in the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

The reserve is perfectly walkable on your own, with the trail map or with the georeferenced track downloaded before setting out. But there are two cases in which an accompanying guide completely changes how the day turns out: groups, because on dirt roads and unmarked forks managing 15 people is a trade of its own, and themed visits, botanical, geological or historical, where you need someone who can read what is in front of you.

For the organization of group, corporate or private outings, you can turn to the network of certified tour leaders of TourLeaderPro, which works with tour operators and groups throughout Italy. Anyone looking for an overview of the services available in the territory of the capital will find it in the section dedicated to professional tourist services in Rome.

Foreign visitors who are planning a trip to Rome and want to understand how to fit a day of nature between the Colosseum and the Vatican Museums will find the guides in English at best things to do in Rome and, for outings outside the city, on the page dedicated to day trips. Anyone who instead thinks in terms of Italian mountains and natural environments starts from mountains and nature in Italy.

Quick questions about the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

How much does it cost to enter the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve?

Nothing. Access to the trails is free, there are no ticket offices or turnstiles. Any activities organized by the visitor center, educational workshops and guided visits, follow their own conditions, to be agreed with the managing body.

Where exactly is the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve?

Between the municipalities of Monterotondo, Mentana and Sant'Angelo Romano, in the Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, northeast of the capital, between the Cornicolani Mountains and the Tiber Valley.

How many hectares does the reserve cover?

About 1,000 hectares.

When was it established?

By Lazio regional law number 29 of October 6, 1997.

Who manages the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve?

The Metropolitan City of Rome Capital, through its protected areas service. The contacts are 348 5212135 and 06 67663320 and the mailbox direttoreareeprotette@cittametropolitanaroma.it.

Do you need to book to visit the reserve?

Not to walk the trails. For the visitor center activities, for outings with schools and for guided visits, yes: you contact the managing body first.

What are the opening hours?

The area has no hours: it is an open territory. The Welcome Area at Via Nomentana km 21+200, on the other hand, opens according to the calendar of activities, to be checked by phone.

How long does a visit last?

From a quarter of an hour, if you limit yourself to trail 439, to a full day if you link several routes. The reasonable compromise is three hours, enough for the 436 loop plus one of the variants of the 437.

How many trails are there in the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve?

15 routes mapped by the Italian Alpine Club: the four main ones 436, 437, 438 and 439, the 11 variants marked by letters, plus the long 484 from Montelibretti to Monterotondo and the third stage of Via di Francesco that cross the area.

Which is the most beautiful trail?

For botany the 436 loop, the Sentiero Celeste of Bosco Nardi, 2.1 kilometers in an hour and a quarter. For karst phenomena the 437C variant, the Sentiero delle Grotte, 1.6 kilometers in half an hour.

Are the trails difficult?

No. Almost all are classified T, that is tourist, with elevation changes between 15 and 90 meters. Only the 484 and Via di Francesco are classified E, hiking. The real difficulty, after rain, is the slippery surface, not the slope.

Can you go by mountain bike?

The forest roads of the reserve are used by cyclists, with the general rule of respecting the signs and the limitations of the protected area's regulations. Common sense calls for moderate speed on stretches shared with pedestrians and no leaving the existing tracks.

Can you bring a dog to the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve?

Yes, on a leash. In an area with wildlife, grazing livestock and neighboring farm properties, a dog off leash is a concrete problem and not a bureaucratic formality.

Can you pick mushrooms?

Picking is subject to the Lazio regional regulations and to local rules, and requires the permit provided for. It has to be checked before leaving with the municipality and the managing body.

Can you pick flowers and orchids?

No. The wild orchids of Bosco Nardi are included in the CITES appendices and picking is forbidden. The same goes for the storax and the other protected species of the reserve.

Can you visit the Pozzo del Merro?

It is not a cavity equipped for tourist visits: access is regulated and dives are reserved for authorized scientific operations. From the trail you can perceive the depression and the vegetation that lines it.

How deep is the Pozzo del Merro?

The wire-guided vehicle Prometeo, in March 2002, reached 392 meters below the water surface without touching the bottom, which therefore remains unknown. The collapse sinkhole at the surface goes down for about 80 meters to the little lake.

What trees are there in the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve?

A deciduous oak wood dominated by Turkey oak, with Hungarian oak, and in the lower layers Oriental hornbeam, field maple and manna ash. In the better drained zones downy oak, holm oak and Judas tree appear. Among the shrubs hawthorn, cornelian cherry, privet, blackthorn and butcher's broom.

What animals can you see?

Fox, badger, beech marten, weasel, porcupine, wild boar, squirrel and dormouse among the mammals. Green woodpecker, spotted woodpecker, wryneck, jay, cuckoo, hoopoe, buzzard, kestrel, little owl, tawny owl, scops owl and barn owl among the birds. Among the reptiles, western whip snake, four-lined snake, grass snake, lizards and geckos.

Is it suitable for children?

Very. Minimal elevation changes, short routes, a closed loop of an hour and a quarter at Bosco Nardi. You do need a baby carrier backpack, though: the stroller won't get through on the dirt surface.

Is it wheelchair accessible?

No. The routes are on natural surface, with no boardwalks or certified tracks. Anyone with mobility needs should contact the managing body first for an updated assessment.

Are there picnic areas or refreshment points?

Not inside the woods, and there are no restrooms or drinking fountains either. Bars and restaurants are in the centers of Monterotondo, Mentana, Fonte Nuova and Sant'Angelo Romano.

How do you get there from Rome without a car?

Regional train FL1 from Tiburtina to Monterotondo, then a local bus or taxi toward Castelchiodato. Alternatively the intercity coaches to Mentana and Monterotondo, with schedules to be checked, very reduced on holidays.

Where do you park?

Along the road, on dirt, at the trail entrances: Via Basento in Mentana, Via di Castelchiodato in Monterotondo, Via Colle Giochetto. There are no equipped parking lots and on spring weekends they fill up early.

What is the difference between this reserve and the Nomentum Nature Reserve?

They share the managing body and the visitor center. Nomentum, about 827 hectares between Mentana and Fonte Nuova, is more fragmented and more agricultural, with a strong historical and archaeological component. The Macchia di Gattaceca keeps the largest patches of woods and the karst heritage.

Can you swim or are there watercourses?

No. In a karst territory rainwater quickly seeps into the subsoil: there are no torrents or bodies of water suitable for swimming. The only visible basin is the little lake at the bottom of the Pozzo del Merro, and it is not accessible.

What is the best time of year?

From mid-March to mid-May for the blooms and the orchids, October and November for the colors and the calm. In summer only in the first hours of the morning or in the last hour of light.

Can you take photographs?

Yes, with no limitations for personal use. For professional shoots and for drone filming, the rules of the protected area and the national rules on flying apply: ask the managing body first.

Are there guided visits in the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve?

The visitor center organizes environmental education activities for schools, associations and citizens. For private and corporate groups it is best to turn to a certified tour leader.

The verdict on the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve

It pays to be wary of places that can be explained in one sentence. This is not a spectacular park: anyone who arrives looking for the postcard panorama or the lit-up cave with a walkway goes away empty-handed, and it is right to say so beforehand.

What the Macchia di Gattaceca and Macchia del Barco Nature Reserve offers is something else, and it is worth more. It is the last substantial piece of the forest that covered the countryside north of Rome, kept standing for centuries not by a law but by the need the peasants of Sabina had for it. It is a subsoil dug out and flooded whose bottom we still don't know, 35 kilometers from the Colosseum. It is the ground Charlemagne crossed before being crowned emperor and where the Garibaldians lost their last card before Porta Pia.

If you have half a day and the desire to walk slowly, go on an April morning, take the 436 at Bosco Nardi and look at the ground instead of far away. You will take home more than you expect.

Article written by the editorial team of TourLeaderPro, contact them for Private/Corporate/V.I.P. Tours and Experiences.

Planning a trip to Rome? The guides in English for visiting the city are on ItalyPlanner.com.