Parco Pantanello

In 1991, walking near Ninfa, Italy's best-known conservationist told the Fondazione Roffredo Caetani: "Let's recreate the marsh." Eighteen years later the Parco Pantanello opened — a hundred hectares of reclaimed farmland turned back into ponds, reed beds and wet meadows, where the Pontine Marshes, drained to extinction in the last century, live again with their ducks, herons and birds of prey.

Why it matters

The Parco Pantanello is the ecological counterpart to the celebrated Giardino di Ninfa, managed by the same Fondazione Roffredo Caetani di Sermoneta. Conceived in 1991 — the foundation credits a walk by Fulco Pratesi, honorary president of WWF Italy, then foundation president Arturo Osio and Ninfa director Lauro Marchetti, with Pratesi's summons to "recreate the marsh" — the park was designed by a team of geologists, botanists, zoologists, entomologists and historians to rebuild the original wetland environment of the Agro Pontino. The reintroduced flora drew on the detailed pre-reclamation studies of botanist Augusto Beguinot (1875–1940). Inaugurated on 15 December 2009, the park covers roughly 100 hectares of former farmland within the Monumento Naturale del Giardino di Ninfa established by Regione Lazio in 2000.

What to notice

Water is the organising idea: about twelve hectares of wetlands — ponds, marshes, wet meadows and small streams — include six marsh ponds fed by the river Ninfa, each deliberately different. Three are flora ponds; one is an amphibian pond kept still and fish-free so larvae can survive; one is a deep-water bird pond for waterfowl with seasonal marshy meadows rich in insects; the last mirrors the walls of Ninfa. The park lies on a major migratory route used for stopovers, wintering and nesting, and the foundation lists wild ducks (teal, shoveler, pochard, gadwall), herons and egrets, kingfishers, lapwings, the rare ferruginous duck, and raptors including the marsh harrier and the peregrine falcon.

Context and history

The Pontine Marshes were one of Italy's defining landscapes for two millennia and were drained in the twentieth century. Pantanello is a deliberate act of restoration: its ponds, plantings and water levels draw on historical and scientific sources, especially Augusto Beguinot's surveys made before the drainage. The park lies within the Monumento Naturale del Giardino di Ninfa.