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The Montioni Natural Park
- Category What to visit in Maremma
Discover the Montioni Natural Park: Route, Historical Notes and Useful Info.
Number of views: 3452Agriturismo - Where to stay overnight
- Montioni Natural Park
- Historical notes on the Montioni Natural Park
- The Paths of the Montioni Natural Park
Montioni Natural Park
The Montioni Natural Park extends for about 7000 hectares between the Cornia Valley and the Pecora in an area between the provinces of Grosseto and Livorno.
The Montioni Natural Park includes two state nature reserves: the Marsiliana which covers 440 hectares and Poggio Tre Cancelli which it covers 100.
These hills, covered by woods, especially holm oaks, form a vegetal landscape closely linked to the action of man, above all to the production of coal and the cutting of the woods.
In the heart of the park, further signs of man emerge from the remains of the alum quarries and from those of the mining village dating back to the Napoleonic era wanted by Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi, Grand Duchess of Tuscany and Napoleon's sister.
Historical notes on the Montioni Natural Park
The existence of medieval settlements and agricultural buildings and minerals during the modern age, give the Natural Park of Montioni, a particular complexity due to the continuous interaction between man and nature: both the activities related to the extraction of aluminous stone, used in antiquity for tanning leather and fixing the colors on the fabrics, both the forest uses (wood, cork and coal) have left numerous marks on the territories that are still clearly legible today.
The alum deposits were in fact widely exploited since the 15th century and in particular in the first decades of the 19th century.
In that period, the Princes of Piombino, Felice and Elisa Baciocchi, had a mining village known as Montioni Nuovo built.
Furthermore, since the 19th century, the forests of Montioni have been a reservoir of coal for the foundry establishments near Follonica and over time have undergone significant cuts for this reason.
The Paths of the Montioni Natural Park
The recommended itinerary to get an overview of the history and nature that characterize the Montioni Natural Park is the one of the path of Poggio Saracino.
The route retraces the traces of the coexistence between man and nature in history, starting from the town of Montioni Nuovo, the heart of the park.
Currently the buildings of the Napoleonic era are still clearly visible, the open-air mines, the entrance to the tunnels that develop underground, the material transport systems and the ovens for firing aluminous stone.
Continuing along the itinerary, crossing a dense evergreen scrub where you can observe the reddish trunks of cork oaks without bark, you reach the panoramic point of Casa Saracino from where you then descend, thus closing the ring.
