Parco Regionale dei Colli Euganei

A themed itinerary in stages along the trail of Mt. Cecilia

• Trail Conditions: On foot
• Interest: Geology

Mt. Cecilia is a laccolith. Magma intruded between layers of sedimentary rock, without disrupting the layers themselves, so that the overlying stratum was forced upward, giving the laccolith a dome form. It is plano-convex in shape, and flattened at the stratification joint, i.e. the upper and lower limit of a layer; these limits often consist of erosion surfaces or surfaces where sediment did not deposit. Magmatic rocks, namely latite, are the first we meet along the trail: latite is a volcanic rock which mostly contains feldspars. Latite products are the last ones in the Euganian volcanic process; this means that magma composition progressively becomes less acid.