Mercantour National Park

Mercantour National Park (French: Parc national du Mercantour) a French national park located in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence and Alpes-Maritimes departments. Since it was created in 1979, the Mercantour Park has proven popular, with 800,000 visitors every year enjoying the 600 km of marked footpaths and visiting its villages.

Mercantour National Park
Parc national du Mercantour
IUCN category II (national park)
Baisse des Cinq Lacs
Coordinates44°08′34″N 7°07′39″E
Area685 km2 (264 sq mi)
Established1979
Visitors800,000 (in 2017)
Governing bodyParcs nationaux de France
www.mercantour.eu

Extent
Vallon de Mollières

The protected area covers some 685 km², consisting of a central uninhabited zone comprising seven valleys: Roya, Bévéra, Vésubie, Tinée, Haut Var and Cians (in the Alpes-Maritimes) plus Verdon and Ubaye (in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence), and a peripheral zone comprising 28 villages.

Many of them are perched villages, such as Belvédère at the entrance to the spectacular Gordolasque valley, concealing great architectural riches (numerous churches decorated with murals and altar pieces by primitive Niçois painters). More than 150 rural sites are located within the Park. Around Mont Bégo there are petroglyphs pecked out on schist and granite faces. They have been dated from the late Neolithic and Bronze Ages.[1][2]

Geography

Valley of marvels

In the heart of this setting of vertiginous summits (including Cime du Gélas, the third highest mountain in the Maritime Alps at 3,143 m), lies a gem listed as a Historical Monument, the famous Vallée des Merveilles, the aptly named "valley of marvels". At the foot of Mont Bégo, climbers can admire some 37,000 petroglyphs dating back to the Bronze Age, representing weapons, cattle and human figures that are sometimes very mysterious. A less challenging destination is the Musée des Merveilles at Tende.

Enter the route guidance

From Nice, take the A8 motorway to Ventimiglia, Italy, then go up the Roya Valley in the direction of Tende. In Saint-Dalmas-de-Tende, village located a few kilometers before Tende, take a road on the left towards the hamlet of Casterino. After 20 minutes by car, we reach the different starting points for hikes (2 hours drive from Nice). A first car park, at a place called "Lac des Mesches", serves as a starting point for the Vallée des Merveilles.

A few kilometers further there will be a lake - Lac Des Mesches, where you will find a parking spot in the end of the road. Few meters after parking spot you will be able to see signs, showing the beginning of Vallée des Merveilles route.

Lakes

Several lakes can be visited, for example the lake of Allos, the lake of the Lauzanier, the lakes of Vens, the lakes of Morgon, and the lakes of the valley of marvels.

Flora

In addition to the holm oak, the Mediterranean olive tree, rhododendrons, firs, spruces, Swiss pines and above all larches, the Mercantour is also endowed with more than 2,000 species of flowering plants, 200 of which are very rare: edelweiss and martagon lily are the best known, but there is also saxifrage with multiple flowers, houseleek, moss campion and gentian offering a multi-coloured palette in the spring. The Mercantour is the site of a large-scale All Taxa Biodiversity Inventory and Monitoring programme to identify all its living species, organised by the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy (EDIT).

Mercantour Fauna Example

Fauna

Walkers may easily glimpse a chamois, several thousand of which live in the park and may often hear the whistling of marmots. The ermine is rarer (and more furtive), as is the ibex and the mouflon, although with a little luck you may be able to observe them during the coolest parts of the day in the summer. There is a tremendous variety of wildlife in the Mercantour: red deer and roe deer in the undergrowth, hares and wild boars, partridges, golden eagles and buzzards, numerous species of butterflies and even about 50 Italian wolves (which migrated there at the beginning of the 1990s). A Wolves Centre welcomes visitors in Saint-martin-Vésubie.

Mercantour marmot
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See also

References
  1. Valley of Marvels;
  2. Jegues-Wolkiewiez, Chantale (1997) Des gravures de la vallée des merveilles au ciel du Mont Bego Dissertation, Laboratoire d'Ethnologie, UNSA.
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