Circeo National Park, on the coast south of Rome, packs a remarkable variety of landscapes into a compact strip of land. A limestone promontory juts into the Tyrrhenian Sea, giving the park its name and its most distinctive landmark. Forests of oak cover the inland slopes, while junipers cling to the seaward face. The peak of Circeo reaches 541 metres above sea level and can be reached on foot from San Felice Circeo, which also serves as the main gateway to the park.
Northwest of the promontory, a 25-kilometre sandbar runs along the coast, its dunes stabilised in places by three species of juniper. In summer the beaches fill with Italian holidaymakers, but behind the dunes lies a quieter world: a chain of lakes and marshes protected under the international Ramsar Convention for their importance to migratory waterfowl.
Inland, a forest of 3,260 hectares includes patches of swamp woodland — the last remnant of the Pontine Marshlands, which were otherwise drained on Mussolini's orders in the 1930s. A visitor centre here is a good starting point for walks into the forest.
Further out to sea, the uninhabited island of Zannone belongs to the park and offers Mediterranean scrubland, heathland, and patches of lavender. Within the park boundaries you will also find Domitian's Villa, a first-century imperial retreat, the botanical garden at Villa Fogliano, and the rationalist town of Sabaudia, built during the land reclamation era.