Gran Paradiso

Gran Paradiso is 4,061 metres high and is the only four thousander that lies entirely within Italian borders. The park that bears its name covers seventy thousand hectares across the Aosta Valley and Piedmont and was created in 1922, the first in Italy: before that it was the hunting reserve of Victor Emmanuel II, and the royal mule tracks people walk today were built by him.

The reason the park exists is the ibex. By the middle of the nineteenth century fewer than a hundred were left in the whole Alps, all of them here, and the king's hunting ban saved them: several thousand now live in the park, and from this population came the reintroductions in France, Switzerland, Austria and Slovenia.

The valleys

On the Aosta Valley side the park is entered from three valleys. Cogne is the widest and the best equipped, with the Prato di Sant'Orso in front of the village and Valnontey at the head; Valsavarenche is narrow and climbs to Pont, from where the normal route to the summit starts; Val di Rhemes is the quietest. All three have campsites.

Walking

The paths are well marked and the old hunting tracks climb at a steady gradient, which makes them comfortable even for the unfit. The easiest walk is the level one from Cogne to Valnontey, an hour through the meadows; the Lillaz waterfalls are twenty minutes from the car park; the Paradisia botanical garden at Valnontey collects the alpine flora and opens in summer.

The animals really are visible, and it takes no luck: ibex and chamois stay above two thousand metres and come down to graze early in the morning. Marmots whistle along every path, and overhead circle the eagles and the bearded vultures, reintroduced from the nineteen eighties.