Territory
When the sea and the mountains happily marry in Aspromonte National Park, surprises never end!
Beyond the luxuriant and mysterious wild landscape alternating with
rough and rocky soils, oasis of vegetation caused by small lakes,
terraces over the sea, and the characteristic plains of the Aspromonte,
the kingdom of Neptune dominates two seas: the Tyrrhenian Sea and the
Ionian Sea, which are linked one to the other by the strait.
It is a natural heritage covering about 80,000 hectares which surrounds
the entire Aspromonte from 800 meters up, and which involves the 37 Municipalities of the Province of Reggio Calabria.
The extreme southern branch of the Apennines, Aspromonte
has a particularly differentiated landscape as far as morphology is
concerned.
The Aspromonte massif mainly consists of a group of
metamorphic rocks which also include small granitic parts, and which is
surrounded by sedimentary rocks.
The change is evident if you go from the Tyrrhenian slope to the Ionian slope.
The first mainly consists of crystalline substrata, and it is
characterized by a series of "petti", very steep slopes, and by "piani", plain areas formed by terraces divided into four overlapping
levels degrading towards the sea in suggestive cliffs overhanging the
Tyrrhenian sea and originating the Costa Viola.
On
the contrary, the Ionian slope is characterized by an heterogeneous
landscape originating from the erosion of the sediments' substrata,
which ends in the sea by forming more or less sandy coasts.
Another
feature of the massif, traditionally seen as a pyramid, is given by the
presence of the "fiumare", watercourses without a spring which, because
the shortness of their route and the considerable slant, have a
torrential character and a considerable erosion capacity.
At the mouth, the ground mainly consists of sand, gravel, and pebbles,
the large riverbed is covered in summer by spontaneous vegetation,
while upstream there are valleys dug by the violent power of water.
Province: Reggio Calabria Region: Calabria
