Monti Sibillini and the Castelluccio flowering

National Park Established In 1993 Across Marche And Umbria, Containing The Piano Grande Of Castelluccio And Its Annual Flowering, Monte Vettore And The Lago Di Pilato · Visso, Marche

A range of rounded limestone mountains on the border of Marche and Umbria, rising to about two thousand five hundred metres, with a high plain in the middle of it at fifteen hundred. For a few weeks between late May and early July that plain does something extraordinary: the lentil fields and the wild flora come out together and the whole floor turns into bands of red poppies, blue cornflowers, yellow mustard and white daisies running for kilometres, which Italians drive all night to see. Above it sits Castelluccio, a village that was largely destroyed by the 2016 earthquakes and is still being rebuilt. The rest of the range is walking country: a glacial lake that turns deep red from a crustacean living in it, wolves that came back on their own, and a cave the sibyl of the mountains was supposed to have lived in. Almost nobody outside Italy has heard of any of it, and the flowering date moves by two or three weeks each year, so watch the park rather than last year's calendar.

Largo G B Gaola Antinori 1, Visso, Marche, 62039, Italy

NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED, and the park has none: it is open country with free access. What is timed is the flowering, roughly late May to early July, peaking for about a fortnight on a date that MOVES BY TWO OR THREE WEEKS EACH YEAR. Traffic control, one-way roads and shuttles operate on peak days. Park visitor centres keep seasonal hours. HIGH ROADS AND PATHS CLOSE IN WINTER AND UNDER EARTHQUAKE ORDERS, the latter without notice. Check the park's access notices before travelling.

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