Trekking in the Apennines - A Trekker's Guide

The Grande Escursione Appenninica – the Great Appenines Trek or GEA – described in this guidebook is a 400km trek through the central-north section of Italy’s Apennine chain. Stunning scenery and picturesque villages enhance this beautiful, but little-known walking route along Italy’s 'spine'.

'Your peaks are beautiful, ye Apennines!
In the soft light of these serenest skies;
From the broad highland region, black with pines,
Fair as the hills of Paradise they rise.'
(To the Apennines, William Cullen Bryant, 1835).

The Apennines

The mountainous Apennines are without a doubt Italy’s best-kept secret. For walkers this glorious range provides thousands of kilometres of marked walking trails over stunning panoramic ridges and exploring stupendous forested valleys and quiet communities, little affected by tourism. There are nature reserves with plentiful wildlife and marvellous wild flowers, historic sanctuaries, hospitable mountain inns, incredible roads and passes that testify to feats of engineering, and stark memorials to the terrible events of World War II.

The Apennines form the rugged spine of the slender Italian peninsula, giving it body and support as it ventures out into the Mediterranean. Peaking at 2912m, the range runs northwest–southeast along the entire length of the country and clocks up some 1400km (870 miles) from its link with the Alps close to the French border, all the way south to the Strait of Messina, even extending over to Sicily. As a formidable barrier that splits Italy in two lengthways, the Apennines have witnessed centuries of wars and skirmishes, alternating with the passage of traders, pilgrims and daring bandits.

The rock is, by and large, sedimentary in nature – sandstone, shale and some limestone – deposited in an ancient sea during the Mesozoic era (245–66 million years ago). The mountains came into existence in the immediate aftermath of their neighbours, the Alps, when remnants of the African plate were forced and squeezed upwards little by little, starting 66 million years ago and climaxing around 2 million years ago.

In the southern regions ongoing volcanic and seismic activity continue to shape the mountains while – though glaciers are now completely absent from the Apennines – ancient ice masses have left much evidence of their existence. One tell-tale clue are the smoothed rock surfaces which, when examined close-to, reveal a host of scratches, caused by stones dragged along by the moving ice. However the easiest to identify are the multitudinous cirques, like giant armchairs found below high ridges, once filled by ice from a lateral glacier tongue and nowadays home more often than not to a lake or tarn. These appear mostly in the northern Apennines and face north–northeast, the colder sheltered face. Over time many have steadily accumulated layers of rotting vegetation which are compressed into stratified peat bogs. These in turn dry out, making way for meadows, and eventually woodland.

The present overall aspect of the Apennines – steep, rough western flanks overlooking the western Tyrrhenian Sea, in contrast to the gentler slopes on the eastern Adriatic side – is due mainly to recent erosion by water. Over time the inhospitable land, scarcity of water and lack of minerals have severely limited human settlement on any substantial scale. But despite this evidence has been unearthed of man’s presence since prehistoric times, some 7000 years ago. At that time the northern Apennines were the stronghold of the ancient Liguri or Ligurian people (as the colonising Romans found out to their detriment over the 150 years it took to get the fierce resistors to accept domination). Their heritage is evident today mainly via  fascinating place names and anthropomorphic stone sculptures, similar to those in Corsica. We are probably indebted to these primitive people for the very name Apennines: the root ‘penn’ signified an isolated peak, a denomination found throughout Italy. In another version (less credited in this day and age) Pennine was a divinity believed to reside on the inhospitable summits, while a further interpretation attributes the name to Re Api, last of the Italic gods.

Over time well-trodden paths conveyed waves of passers-by, such as devotees on the Via Francigena which led from Canterbury to Rome and beyond. The great medieval poet Dante Alighieri spent part of his exile from his native Florence in the Apennines. It was a source of inspiration for the Divine Comedy, and the same holds true for Petrarch and Boccaccio. Brilliant German writer and traveller Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, revelling in sun-blessed Italy, was heading south towards Rome in October 1786, and wrote:

'I find the Apennines a remarkable part of the world. Upon the great plain of the Po basin there follows a mountain range that rises from the depths, between two seas, to end the continent on the south... it is a curious web of mountain ridges facing each other... if the valleys were filled in more and the flat surfaces smoother and better watered, the region could be compared to Bohemia, except that these mountains have an entirely different character. Still, one must not imagine a high wasteland, but a countryside most cultivated, even though mountainous.'

From their base near the Tyrrhenian coast, both Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley were inspired by the Apennines, which made appearances in their respective works Valperga and The Witch of Atlas.

The ‘romantic’ wild woods and mountainous ridges were long the realm of smugglers, woodcutters and charcoal burners. The latter were renowned as a wild mob who moved from camp to camp erecting huge compact mounds of cut branches that underwent slow round-the-clock combustion. Their circular cleared work platforms are still visible. It’s also common to encounter monuments to the passage of indefatigable Giuseppe Garibaldi, responsible for uniting the north of Italy with Sicily and the southern regions in 1861 under the Kingdom of the House of Savoy. He crossed the Apennines on one of his campaigns, his ranks swelled by several of the Robin Hood-style bandits in revolt in the Romagna region against harsh taxes and the Austrian occupation.

The central-north section of the Apennines were subjected to widespread devastation in the latter years of World War I. Once fascist Italy had recapitulated and signed a peace agreement with the Allies in 1943, the Germanes turned into occupying forces and dug themselves in to prepare for the inevitable Allied advance. They constructed massive defences – the so-called Gothic Line – that stretched coast-to-coast all the way across the peninsula, drastically clearing ridges to enable control of strategic passes and key communication routes such as railways. Now a sea of green has all but obliterated signs of battle, so present-day visitors perceive little of this. However, there are poignant reminders in the shape of war cemeteries and ubiquitous memorials to the partisans, former soldiers who sprang into action after the armistice, aided in numerous cases by Allied officers parachuted in behind the lines.

A final note is in order pertaining to emigration. Starting at the end of the 19th century entire villages the length and breadth of the Apennines were abandoned as people left in search of work in France, Belgium, Germany and the UK, often to labour in the mines. In many cases the links with ‘home’ were never severed, and apparently deserted hamlets in isolated spots swell and come to life during the summer months as relatives return to open up the old family home and enjoy the cool mountain air. A multitude of languages can be heard, and foreign number plates spotted.

The Trek

The Great Apennines Trek described in this guide is a walk along the central mountainous spine of Italy, a journey through a vast wooded swathe of the country, miles from the well-beaten tourist trail. The villages and passes encountered see few domestic let alone foreign visitors.

The Trek spends 23 wonderful days (a grand total of 123 hours 35 minutes) snaking its way northwest along the ridge of the central-north Apennines with numerous diversions to valley-based villages. It follows (for the main part) the established long-distance walking route known as the GEA (pronounced ‘jayah’ in Italian), which stands for Grande Escursione Appenninica. Ideated in the 1980s by Florentine walking enthusiasts Alfonso Bietolini and Gianfranco Bracci, it has since been incorporated into the mammoth Sentiero Italia (SI) project and the European trail E1. However, during preparations for this guide, departures from the original route became necessary at numerous points along the way due to impassable overgrown tracks, absence of waymarking and the creeping advance of tarmac, in addition to logical improvements.

Starting in eastern Tuscany on the border with Umbria and the Marche, it makes a number of forays into Emilia-Romagna – with marked changes in accents and cuisine – and moves across to run parallel to the Tyrrhenian Sea heading north to the edge of Liguria. A little under 400km in length (375.6km – about a third of the total length of the Apennine chain), it entails altitudes ranging between 400 and 2000m above sea level. With accommodation in comfortable guest houses and refuges, it is suitable for a broad range of walkers.

The route is straightforward, on well-marked paths and forestry tracks. The odd brief tract negotiates exposed crest, usually avoidable. The terrain ranges from thick carpets of flowered meadows through to rock slopes and woods, where layers of leaf litter provide a soft base for tired feet and the plays of sunlight serve as distractions from fatigue.

The initial southernmost sections of the Trek traverse the multi-star 364 sq km Parco Nazionale delle Foreste Casentinesi, which boasts magnificent spreads of ancient chestnut, fir and beech wood lovingly nurtured by monks over the centuries. Moreover it coincides with the pathways taken by St Francis of Assisi as he tramped the hills setting up isolated retreats and spreading his message of simplicity. The second, higher part of the Trek makes its rocky way ‘on a tightrope’ high above Tuscany and Emilia-Romagna, where noteworthy localities stand out. On the eastern flanks, where the Apennines slope down to the intensively cultivated Po plain, is the city of Parma, renowned for cured ham and world-famous Parmesan cheese; then there’s Modena, synonymous with balsamic vinegar. On the opposite side of the Apennines, to the west, is Carrara and the Apuan Alps, heavily quarried for the high-grade marble transformed into Italy’s masterpieces by artists the likes of Michelangelo. On the other hand the actual ridges traversed come under the auspices of the brand new 240 sq km Parco Nazionale dell’Appennino Tosco-Emiliano, which has brought together two high-profile regional parks, the Parco del Gigante and Parco dei Cento Laghi, not to mention four special state reserves.