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Circeo National Park

Circeo National Park historical timeline

Last updated on October 9, 2026

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Circeo was created in the middle of the operation it was meant to survive. The Pontine Marshes were being drained; the park is the piece that was deliberately not drained. Everything since has been a slow process of adding protections to that original fragment, and of discovering how old the human record in it actually is.

Chronology

Prehistory The caves at the foot of the promontory are occupied from the Palaeolithic onwards, and preserve the record of past climate shifts and sea-level change.
1934 The park is founded by the forestry administration of the day, at Benito Mussolini's wish and on the advice of Senator Raffaele Bastianelli, to protect the last remains of the Pontine Marshes then being reclaimed. It is the only Italian national park consisting solely of plain and coast.
1939 A skull of Homo neanderthalensis is found in the Grotta Guattari, at the base of the promontory.
1941 Natale Prampolini, the senator and engineer who designed the reclamation of the Agro Pontino, is made Count of Circeo by Vittorio Emanuele III.
1953 Fallow deer are introduced for game-restocking by the former state forestry agency and kept inside a 400-hectare enclosure. They escape, and their descendants come to occupy the whole forest -- with no predators, damaging its regeneration.
1976 The wetlands of the Circeo are declared a Wetland of International Importance.
1977 The forest is declared a biosphere reserve and entered in the UNESCO Man and Biosphere programme. The park has since been put forward for World Heritage listing.
1979 The island of Zannone is annexed to the park.
1991 The framework law on protected areas (L. 394/1991) provides for a park authority, but nothing follows for fourteen years. In the interim the park is run by an extraordinary commissioner, Gen. Salvatore Armando Bellassai, formerly mayor of Sabaudia, and an acting director.
2005 DPR 155/2005 finally starts the creation of the Ente Parco.
2007 The process closes with the appointment of a President and a governing council. Gaetano Benedetto serves as first President from 2007 to 2018; Giuliano Tallone is first director, 2008-2013.
2025 The discovery is announced at Riparo Blanc of the oldest necropolis in Lazio and one of the oldest known anywhere, dated between 9,300 and 7,500 B.C.

Verified against Wikipedia, October 2026.

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Checked against Wikipedia — The Circeo park was established in 1934 by the forestry administration of the time at the wish of Benito Mussolini, on the suggestion of Senator Raffaele Bastianelli, in order to protect the last remains of the Pontine Marshes which were being reclaimed in exactly those years, and Natale Prampolini, the senator and engineer who designed the reclamation of the Agro Pontino, was rewarded by Vittorio Emanuele III with the title of Count of Circeo in 1941, The Circeo national park is a national park established in 1934, one of the oldest protected natural areas in Italy, located along the Tyrrhenian coast of historic Lazio between Anzio and Terracina, covering an area of 8,917 hectares and taking its name from the promontory of the same name, and it is managed by the Ente Parco Nazionale del Circeo as part of the national system of Italian protected areas, Among the numerous coastal caves of naturalistic interest at the Circeo promontory are the Grotta Guattari, where in 1939 a skull of Homo neanderthalensis was found, the Goats Cave, the Impiso Cave, the Grotta del Fossellone and the Grotta Breuil, the latter also inhabited by Neanderthal Man, The fallow deer, introduced into the Circeo park in 1953 as part of game-restocking breeding programmes carried out by the former Azienda di Stato delle Foreste Demaniali and kept inside a large enclosure of 400 hectares, escaped from captivity and gave rise to the population that currently occupies the entire forest, with varying densities and not without damaging the renewal of the forest heritage, given the imbalance deriving from the lack of predators; the forest was declared a biosphere reserve in 1977 and included in the MAB programme, Birds at the Circeo are very numerous and can easily be observed at the Pantani dell'Inferno area, facing the Lago di Caprolace, where the presence of the brackish waters of the lake and the fresh waters of the marshes favours the stopping of different species; in the brackish waters of the lakes fishing activities are practised with systems compatible with conservation requirements, guaranteeing respect for the environment, employment and the maintenance of traditional activities, and besides the four coastal lakes there are marshy areas and pastures used mainly for raising buffalo in a semi-wild state, where cattle egrets, cranes, geese, lapwings, skylarks and curlews are found; given the importance of the Circeo wetlands, in 1976 they were declared a Wetland of International Importance, The Circeo national park has been a UNESCO biosphere reserve since 1977 and has been a candidate for the title of world heritage site, Zannone is a small island that became part of the Circeo park in 1979; it is uninhabited and covered with woods of holm oaks and oaks, and among the Pontine islands it is the only one to have kept its vegetation cover intact, offering interest in every season from the spectacular heather blooms of autumn to the thousands of birds that stop there during migration; its flora runs from helichrysum on the cliff through mastic, myrtle and erica, then broom, phillyrea and tree spurge giving way to strawberry tree and holm oak, with holm oak woods, heathers and laurels to the north, while among the wild animals is the mouflon, introduced on the island in the 1920s and now a protected species, Although already provided for by the framework law on protected areas L. 394/1991, it was only in 2005 that DPR 155/2005 began the establishment of the Ente Parco, a process concluded in 2007 with the appointment of the President and the Governing Council, the first President from 2007 until 2018 being Gaetano Benedetto and the first director Giuliano Tallone from 2008 to 2013, while before 2007 the Park had been run by an extraordinary commissioner, Gen. Salvatore Armando Bellassai, formerly mayor of Sabaudia, In 2025 the discovery was announced at Riparo Blanc of the oldest necropolis in Lazio and one of the oldest known, dated between 9,300 and 7,500 B.C., The Circeo promontory is an area of notable speleological interest since numerous caves open at its base which have kept the record of climatic variations and sea-level oscillations in past geological eras and have yielded evidence of very ancient human occupation from the Palaeolithic onwards, the best known being the Grotta Guattari where a Neanderthal-type skull was found in 1939, with the Grotta delle Capre easily reached by land near the Grotta dell'Impiso and the Grotta del Fossellone, the archaeologically interesting Grotta Breuil, and others including the Grotta Azzurra famous for its colour reflections, the Grotta del Presepe named for stalagmite flows that seen from the sea resemble kneeling figures, the "Cinque grotte" or "Cattedrale" named for a shape recalling Gothic cathedrals full of spires, the Grotta Barbara and the Grotta della Maga Circe, which legend says Circe pointed out to Odysseus so that he could shelter his boat there (October 2026).

Circeo National Park historical timeline

Chronology

External resources

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