Description of the attraction
The Val Grande Valley is the largest wilderness area in Europe, stretching over an area of 14,598 hectares from the shores of Lake Lago Maggiore to the southern Lepontine Alps. This is a real untouched "island" of mountains and valleys with delightful and breathtaking mysterious landscapes, lost among canyons, steep cliffs and impenetrable forests.
All this "wild" beauty is the result of the abandonment of many types of agricultural activities that people had been doing in these places for hundreds of previous years in the 1950s and 60s. Today, the landscapes of Val Grande and its vegetation are distinguished by an extraordinary richness and diversity. Particularly notable in this respect is the Pogallo River Valley, which is the source of the rapid flow of San Bernardino right at the peak of Monte Togano (2301 meters).
Val Grande forests are mainly mixed deciduous and are represented, most often, by chestnut trees. Yew trees grow in humid zones, and if you go higher into the mountains, you can find black and gray alder, spruce, willow, poplar, Austrian oak, ash and countless beeches. Among the flowers, Alpine catchments, tulips and white rhododendrons stand out for their special beauty. Chamois, deer, roe deer, foxes, badgers, weasels and martens roam in the forests, and eagles and owls soar high in the sky.
But the vast region of Val Grande is important not only for its unspoiled nature, but also for its numerous historical monuments associated with the millennium of human presence in these places. Here you can see rock paintings, abandoned huts, tunnels carved into the rocks for livestock, man-made terraces, chapels, devices for transporting wood and cleaning charcoal, defensive structures ("Cadorna Line") and memorial plaques. In addition, in the southern part of the valley is the Candoglio quarry, from which marble was mined for six centuries for the construction of the world famous Milan Duomo.
On the territory of Val Grande there are many roads, some of which are accessible to everyone, and the other - only for experienced travelers - Maleco, Rovegro di San Bernardino Verbano, Intragna, Premosello Chiovenda.
