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The WWF Oasis of Pian Sant’Angelo is located in the Municipality of Corchiano and Gallese (Viterbo) and occupies an area of 628 acres. It’s made of different environments with century-old oaks, wooded gorges, and Faliscian monuments (erected by Italic people who lived in what is now northern Lazio, on the Etruscan side of the Tiber River).
The territory of this reserve consists of an ancient agricultural area with hedges and isolated trees – particularly important for the protection of biodiversity – forests and some tufaceous gorges.
Patches of Mediterranean scrub are full of erica (Erica arborea), corbezzolo (Arbutus unedo), fillirea (Phillyrea latifolia), cerro (Quercus cerris), roverella (Quercus pubescens), South European flowering ashes (Fraxinus ornus), and wild privets (Ligustrum vulgare). Along the waterways, common alders (Alnus glutinosa), common aspens (Populus tremula), silver poplars (Populus alba), and common hazels (Coryllus avellana) can be found.

Among the woods, in the clearings, rockroses, cornflowers, anemones, cyclamens, and orchids (Spirantes spiralis autunnalis, Orchis purpurea, Serapias lingua, and Dactylorhiza romana) bloom in spring.

Rock walls, waterways and ponds offer the perfect habitat to many species of animals like, wildcats, porcupines, badgers, martens, skunks, and many types of chiropteans. Tortoises and Italian stream frogs can be found as well.
Then there are swallows, red-backed and woodchat shrikes, common buzzards, European honey buzzards, peregrine falcons, Eurasian sparrowhawks, hobbies, kestrels, montagu’s harriers, and western marsh harriers.

There are also prominent traces of ancient settlements from Upper Palaeolithic men, who used the “Faliscian Caverns” – eroded by ancient waterways – as shelters.
The Etruscan-Faliscian presence is still visible in the impressive aqueduct of “Ponte del Ponte” – a most remarkable example of hydraulic engineering – and funerary structures such as the chamber tomb known as “Tomba del Capo”, consisting of a porticoed structure with a burial chamber.

This post is also available in: Italiano (Italian)