Italy
Rocca Calascio
Among the highest fortresses in the Apennines, alone on a ridge with only wind for company.
The fortress appears first as silhouette, four corner towers and a keep balanced on a bare ridge with nothing else standing. The path climbs through an abandoned stone hamlet, each doorway framing a different run of peaks. At the top there is wind, and the plateau, and little else.
Rocca Calascio holds its limestone ridge at about 1,460 metres above the Campo Imperatore plateau, a watchtower from around the tenth century expanded into a fortress under Antonio Piccolomini in the fifteenth. The earthquake of 1703 broke it, and centuries of ruin followed before careful partial restoration. Film crews found the silhouette irresistible, and it has carried several famous productions since. On the slope below stands the octagonal chapel of Santa Maria della PietĂ , raised, tradition says, after villagers beat back a raid they credited to miraculous help, and beyond it the half-abandoned hamlet keeps a few beds for people who want to sleep beneath the walls.
Solo
The climb is short, the summit is bare, and there is no signal and no reason to want one.
Couple
Come at dawn or dusk for the gold light on limestone, sleep in the hamlet and wake beneath the walls.
Friends
Link the fortress with the walk across to Santo Stefano di Sessanio and finish on skewers of lamb; a full highland day.
- The fortress holds its ridge at about 1,460 metres above the Campo Imperatore plateau.
- The fortress became a setting for numerous films, Ladyhawke most famously among them.
- The approach walks through a half-abandoned stone hamlet before the final ridge.
- The octagonal chapel below was raised, tradition says, in thanks for a miraculous rescue.
Canestrato, the basket-marked pecorino of the transhumance flocks, tastes of hay and high pasture.
On the road up, roadside grills sell skewers of salted lamb straight off the coals.
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