Circeo National Park

Circeo is the national park Italy made out of what it had just destroyed. It was founded in 1934, while the Pontine Marshes were being drained, specifically to keep the last remnants of them -- which makes it the only Italian national park that is all plain and coast, with no mountains to fall back on. The result is five quite different places inside 8,917 hectares: the largest plain forest in Italy, a 541-metre limestone promontory, 22 km of dune, four brackish coastal lakes, and an uninhabited island.

Each one is worth a separate day. The forest is the last of the Selva di Terracina, with autumn rain-pools the locals call piscine; the promontory has two faces, a humid north slope and a sun-baked south one carrying the only wild palm in Europe; the lakes bring cranes, curlews and lapwings; and the caves at the foot of the mountain produced a Neanderthal skull in 1939 and, in 2025, the oldest necropolis in Lazio.

The friction is that it is not a single destination with a gate. It is a strip of coast from Anzio to Terracina with the town of Sabaudia in the middle of it, and the dune road is lined with villas that the source itself says have disfigured the place. Pick one habitat per visit and use the park's own marked trails rather than driving its length.

Visit if you:

• want to see Mediterranean coastal habitats that have survived nowhere else in Italy
• are a birdwatcher -- the wetlands are of international importance
• care about Palaeolithic archaeology and want the caves that produced it
• prefer walking or cycling a marked network to driving between sights

Skip it if you:

• want one compact site you can see in a morning
• expect wilderness -- the dune is built up and the forest is managed
• are coming in high summer for the beach alone; the habitats are the point

This park exists because somebody drained everything around it. It was set up in 1934 to save the last remnants of the Pontine Marshes while the reclamation was in progress, and the four lakes are literally what is left. That is the frame for everything else: there is no second Circeo.

The dune is the most easily damaged thing here and the most easily protected. Its pioneer plants -- sea daffodil, sand couch, sea chamomile -- are not scenery; their roots form the underground net that holds the sand and lets everything behind them grow. Wooden walkways were laid specifically so people could reach the beach without trampling them. Use them. The source is also blunt that the dune has already been spoiled by an unbroken line of villas and fences along its top, so the margin left is thin.

In the forest, keep to the paths and respect the three integral reserves -- Piscina delle Bagnature, Piscina della Gattuccia and Lestra della Coscia. Mushroom collecting is regulated and controlled, and the fungi here are both rich and prized. The forest's real problem is a population of fallow deer that escaped a 400-hectare enclosure after being introduced in 1953 for game restocking; with no predators they now damage the forest's regeneration, and the authority runs a control plan. It is a standing lesson in what introducing a species costs.

On the water, the lake fisheries are run with methods compatible with conservation so that the tradition and the employment survive alongside the habitat -- buying that fish supports the arrangement. On the lakes and at Pantani dell'Inferno, keep your distance from roosting and feeding birds; this is a wetland of international importance and the European pond turtle here is at risk of extinction in Italy.

The park also runs documented conservation programmes you can simply not interfere with: projects on bats, amphibians and the Italian hare, bird monitoring, wild-boar management, and LIFE-funded work including Life Rewetland and Life Samfix. Dogs are welcome on the trail set published for them, on the lead.

Circeo is an open national park along the coast between Anzio and Terracina, not a gated site, and the Ente Parco Nazionale del Circeo publishes no single admission price. The authority is at Via Carlo Alberto 188, 04016 Sabaudia (LT), on 0773 512240 (fax 0773 512241), segreteria@parcocirceo.it.

Start at a visitor structure rather than a car park. The park runs a Centro Visitatori - Museo del Parco, listed as open, and a Centro di Documentazione on schooling and health in the Pontine marshes. These are where the current trail and access position is held.

Walk the published routes. The authority maintains named trail sets -- paths through the park, a separate group on the promontory, cycle routes, a Sentieri per tutti selection, and a set where dogs on the lead are allowed -- and the forest is covered by a dense network of walking and cycling paths. On the dune, use the wooden walkways to reach the beach; they exist to stop trampling from destroying the vegetation that holds the sand.

Three parts of the forest are integral nature reserves -- Piscina delle Bagnature, Piscina della Gattuccia and Lestra della Coscia -- the strictest protection category. Mushroom picking in the forest is regulated and controlled. Fishing continues on the lakes but only with methods compatible with conservation.

Plan around the habitat you want. The forest, the promontory, the dune, the lakes and the island of Zannone are separate places; Zannone is uninhabited and reached by boat. Sabaudia sits in the middle of the coastal strip and is the practical base.

Autumn is the connoisseur's season here and it is not close. The piscine in the forest -- temporary marshy pools -- form in autumn from accumulated rainwater and are one of the things that make this forest unlike any other in Italy. The heather on Zannone flowers spectacularly in the same months. And in autumn the sea puts the barchette di San Pietro on the beach, by-the-wind sailors like miniature sailing boats that turn the sand bluish.

For birds, go on passage. The lakes hold water birds through the cooler months, and the promontory is crossed by large numbers of raptors and other migrants, with thousands of birds also stopping on Zannone during migration. Pantani dell'Inferno, opposite Lago di Caprolace, is the place to stand.

Spring suits the promontory and the forest walks: the climate is typically Mediterranean, the Quarto caldo on the south face is sunlit all year and gets genuinely hot later on, and the dune is a place of high temperatures, long droughts and strong wind by design.

High summer is the one period to think twice about. The dune beaches fill, the coast road along the dune is built up with villas, and the heat on the southern slope is unforgiving. If you come then, do the forest early and leave the exposed ground alone.