The Monte Tezio Natural Park
The Monte Tezio Natural Park is a valuable nature reserve located a few kilometres north of the city of Perugia. It covers an area of approximately 1,200 hectares, offering a variety of breathtaking landscapes and rich biodiversity.
Mount Tezio, a 961-metre mountainous relief that divides the plain of the river Tiber, to the east, from the hills sloping towards Lake Trasimeno, to the west, rises imposingly. Together with the surrounding reliefs, this mountain has an incomparable charm thanks to its structure, at once gentle and rugged, and to the colours of the Mediterranean scrub that characterises its slopes.
The breadth of its panoramas allows one to admire both the central Apennine chain, up to the peak of Gran Sasso d’Italia, and the expanse of Lake Trasimeno with the peaks separating it from Tuscany, up to the Cetona and Amiata mountains.
The vegetation within the park is varied and abundant. Along the ridge stretching from Monte Tezio to Monte Acuto (which overlooks the town of Umbertide), there are holm oaks at low altitudes, while on the way up one can find black hornbeam, manna ash, turkey oak, downy oak and maple. The piedmont area is dominated by Mediterranean scrub with juniper, both common and red, hawthorn, bramble, broom and blackthorn. In the surrounding hills are agricultural landscapes, cultivated with olive trees and arable land.
The wildlife sees the presence, albeit limited, of fallow and roe deer, but also wild boar, foxes, porcupines, badgers and squirrels. Among the resident and migratory birds are several species of falcons, including the Short-toed eagle and Goshawk, as well as buzzards, owls, kestrels, jays, the green woodpecker, the tree-creeper or nuthatch, the serin, goldfinch, great tit, and the blackcap.