Monte Armelio: a balcony over the Val Trebbia

The trail that climbs Monte Armelio winds through the heart of the Site of Community Importance "Monte Capra, Monte Tre Abati, Monte Armelio, Sant'Agostino, Lago di Averaldi", a natural area of the Piacenza Apennines perched on the ridge separating the Val Trebbia from the Val Nure, between the municipalities of Coli and Farini.

Beneath your boots, here, you're not walking on just any Apennine mountain: you're walking on a fragment of ancient ocean floor. About 160 million years ago these rocks (basalts, gabbros, peridotites transformed into serpentinites) formed on the bottom of the ancient Ligurian-Piedmont Ocean; today they surface in only a few areas of the Apennines, concentrated almost exclusively between the upper valleys of Trebbia, Nure, Taro and Aveto. In the fractures of these very rocks, right at Monte Tre Abati, a stone's throw from here and part of the same protected complex, lizardite has been recorded, a green mineral of the serpentine group that is, literally, a chemical signature of that vanished ocean.

The landscape tells the story at a glance: ophiolites can be recognized from afar by their dark color, green hues and rugged shapes, which resist erosion more than the surrounding clays and sandstones, creating true "islands" of bare rock amid the green of the woods. As you climb, you pass through mixed woods of oaks, chestnuts, hazels and pine stands, gaining views over the Trebbia and Nure valleys.

From here, on the clearest days, you can observe the entire arc of the Piacenza Apennines: Parcellara, Penice, Lesima, Alfeo, Capra, Osero, Menegosa... and even the Alpine arc.

The rocky substrate, poor in nutrients and rich in metals, has over time selected a specialized flora, a small "natural botanical garden".

A route that combines geology, botany and scenery, in a corner of the Apennines still little known.