Читать книгу Trekking in the Apennines. The Grande Escursione Appenninica онлайн

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From their base near the Tyrrhenian coast, both Mary and Percy Bysshe Shelley were inspired by the Apennines, which made appearances in their respective works Valperga and ‘The Witch of Atlas’.

The ‘romantic’ wild woods and mountainous ridges were long the realm of smugglers, woodcutters and charcoal burners. The latter were renowned as a wild mob who moved from camp to camp erecting huge compact mounds of cut branches that underwent slow round-the-clock combustion. Their circular cleared work platforms are still visible. Plaques recording the passage of indefatigable Giuseppe Garibaldi are not unusual. Instigator of the unification of northern Italy with Sicily and the south in 1861 under the Kingdom of the House of Savoy, he crossed the Apennines on one of his campaigns, his ranks swelled by Robin Hood-style bandits in revolt in the Romagna region against harsh taxes and the Austrian occupation.

Lovely Lago Scaffaiolo (Stage 14)

The central and northern Apennines were subjected to widespread devastation in the latter years of World War II. Once fascist Italy had recapitulated and signed a peace agreement with the Allies in 1943, the Germans turned into occupying forces and dug themselves in to prepare for the inevitable advance which thankfully led to the liberation of the whole country in 1945. Massive defences were constructed in 1944 – the so-called Gothic Line – that stretched coast-to-coast across the peninsula, entailing drastically clearing ridges to enable control of strategic passes along with key communication routes. Although a sea of green has now all but obliterated signs of battle, there are poignant reminders in the shape of war cemeteries and memorials to the Italian partisans, former soldiers who sprang into action after the armistice, working closely in liaison with Allied servicemen parachuted in behind the lines.