Hortus Italiae: a balcony on the Po Valley!
Rising straight from the Garda Lake, overlooking the Adige Valley, Monte Baldo Local Nature Park is a balcony on the Po Valley. It includes the territories belonging to five different municipalities of the lower Trentino, and a series of protected areas situated at an altitude ranging between a few hundred meters above sea level and higher altitudes even beyond 2,000 m. In winter it is proud of its snow-covered summits, while in summer the beautiful landscapes are characterized by extraordinary views of the Garda lake. Then the blooming meadows in spring and the multicolored beech forests in autumn. The local tourist offer, focused on the winter sports and on the nature hikes all the year-round, satisfies both adults and children.
Thanks to the extraordinary biodiversity characterizing it, Mount Baldo Local Nature Park has been a sought-after destination for naturalists, apothecaries and pharmacists since 1400. In 1500 Giovan Battista Olivi called this area "Hortus Italiae", meaning "Garden of Italy". The Baldo Park has been for centuries the ideal place to collect the medicinal plant species, to study their possible utilization in the modern pharmacopeia, to carry out researches in the field of botanics, geology and other natural sciences. The Park represents a territorial system, which thanks to its natural, scientific, historic, cultural and landscape values of particular interest lands itself to a unitary management, with particular attention to the needs of enhancement and revitalization of the natural and semi-natural environments, as well as to the human and economic activities compatible with the conservation needs.
