Discover Montagna Spaccata and the Grotta del Turco

On the seaward side of Monte Orlando at Gaeta, the rock is split, and the cleft holds a sanctuary and a sea cave. The Sanctuary of Santissima Trinita is recorded as early as the eleventh century and had visitors including Francis of Assisi and Philip Neri. From it the Grotta del Turco can be reached -- a grotto that ends directly in the sea, where the waves work on the light.

Monte Orlando is a rounded promontory pushing out into the Gulf of Gaeta and ending in a cliff that falls sheer to the sea -- the last seaward spur of the Monti Aurunci chain. Its closeness to the water sets a climate that changes within a few hundred metres and supports plant communities that would not otherwise sit side by side. The protected area covers 59 hectares of land and 30 of sea.

The cliff face is a section through the Aurunci: a pile of carbonate beds, limestone where calcium carbonate dominates and dolomite where magnesium joins it, deposited in a Cretaceous sea about 135 million years ago in conditions the park compares to the Bahamian coral platforms, and raised by the African-Eurasian collision from 65 million years ago. The fractures left by that uplift are visible all along the falesie, and the Montagna Spaccata is the largest of them -- a fault, with movement between the two sides. Rainwater and wave erosion carved the rest: caves, cavities, crevices, the Grotta del Turco.

The vegetation sorts itself into four forms. Woodland holds the north-west, mostly holm oak, with pines and downy oaks from a reafforestation of about 1850 under the Bourbon kingdom and a good number of olives left from old farming. Low maquis regenerated from burnt stools after fires that preceded protection. The whole south-facing sector, dry, hard-lit and wind-exposed, has degraded to gariga. And the cliffs themselves, unreachable, carry a vegetation that has survived almost untouched -- which is why the rarities are all on the face.

Human use has marked the promontory since Roman times and did not stop until the Second World War: bastions, powder magazines, munitions depots and gun emplacements are scattered through the park alongside the Roman remains, and the vegetation has inevitably suffered for it. The park's reading is that the conditions now exist for it to work its way back towards its original state.

The park authority counts four characteristic vegetation forms on Monte Orlando at Gaeta -- woodland, low maquis, gariga and rupestrian -- within a promontory of 59 land hectares, because the climate shifts over a few hundred metres.

The wood

North-western, predominantly holm oak. The pines and downy oaks are there because of a reafforestation carried out around 1850 under the Bourbon kingdom, and a good number of olives mark old agriculture. Carobs show up too, planted for military purposes -- their pods are relished by horses. Damper sectors favour laurel and hawthorn, and hold specimens of myrtle and mastic that look different from the same species elsewhere on the mountain because they get less sun. The climbers include ivy, asparagus, smilax, Rubia peregrina and traveller's joy.

Low maquis and gariga

The low maquis was shaped by fires that ran before the area was protected, and most of what stands now regenerated from burnt stools. Tree heath and strawberry tree crowd the sub-acid ground and vanish where the acidity drops; limestone carries the most degraded cover, myrtle, mastic, cistus and Ampelodesmos in broken cushions. The arid, hard-lit, wind-raked south side is gariga: mastic, heaths, sea-cistus, thorny broom, rare carob and terebinth. Those harsh conditions also produce locally exclusive plants -- Ornithogalum arabicum, gladioli, several wild garlics -- and the gariga is prime orchid ground, including the rare Spiranthes spiralis, the only European orchid that flowers in autumn.

The cliff plants

The inaccessibility of the falesie has preserved these almost unaltered. Aleppo pine grows on the sheer face, and recent studies have shown it to be native here. The dwarf palms are important: indigenous to continental Europe and the last specimens to escape the people who dug them up for private gardens. There is also Lavatera maritima, the rare Convolvulus siculus -- common in Sicily and Sardinia, extremely rare in mainland Italy -- and, extraordinarily rare, Asplenium petrarchae, a fern that lives in the smallest fissures. Then Daphne sericea, lavender, rosemary, ferula, everlasting, cineraria, Jupiter's beard, tree spurge and rock samphire.

The promontory above Gaeta is a staging post on the migratory bird routes to the Tyrrhenian coast, and the inaccessibility of some of its rock habitats makes it a safe refuge for resident species. Birds are what there is to see here; the park says so.

On passage

In spring and autumn: swallows, swifts, hoopoes, bee-eaters, harriers, storks, honey buzzards, grey herons, little egrets, marsh harriers and kites.

Resident

Substantial populations of gulls and cormorants, which rest on the rocks after fishing, plus kingfishers, wallcreepers and a range of passerines. Less widespread but present in good numbers are kestrels, common buzzards and peregrine falcons. In the woods the attentive visitor picks up the barn owl's hissing call, and the night silence is broken by scops owls, little owls and, less often, tawny owls -- calls that popular belief long took for omens of misfortune, and that are in fact the sound of the local control on the rodent population.

On the ground, and under the water

Terrestrial fauna is limited by how built-up the surroundings are: shrews, the white-toothed shrew, the field mouse and -- oddly, since this is not its preferred habitat -- the edible dormouse. Reptiles and amphibians include the wall lizard, the three-toed skink and the western whip snake; the green frog, common toad and tree frog. The stretch of sea in front of the cliffs, among the breaking rocks and on bottoms over 30 metres deep, holds a range of marine flora and fauna, some of it ordinary for the Mediterranean and some of it, the park says, a genuine surprise.

Everything at the Gaeta sanctuary is stairs in a confined cleft. The Cappella del Crocifisso is reached by a staircase descending into the second fissure; on the right-hand wall as you go down are the Latin distich and the Mano del Turco. The Grotta del Turco has its own descent, and this is the one thing worth knowing before arriving: the long staircase that used to run all the way down to the sea has been shortened for safety, so the route stops short of the water while still reaching the point where the light off the waves is the point.

The sanctuary stands on the western flank of Monte Orlando above Serapo. The surrounding park is crossed by marked routes, including the Sentiero delle Falesie from the sanctuary to the powder magazines and the CAI LH17 path over Monte Orlando, so the site can be reached on foot from within the park as well as from the town. The sea in front of the cliffs is open to diving, and the park also runs canoe trips to the Grotta del Turco -- which is the only way to see the grotto from the water now that the stairs stop higher up.

What actually split the mountain?

A fault. Regione Lazio's park pages state that the Montagna Spaccata is a rupture of the rocks with movement of the parts -- the same mechanism that produces earthquakes. The devotional tradition of the place, which the park records as unconfirmed, has an earthquake at the instant of Christ's death opening the fissures.

Is the Mano del Turco a handprint?

No. The park authority identifies it as a karst phenomenon caused by rainwater moving inside the rock, which happens to look like a hand pressed into the stone. The legend has a sceptical Turkish sailor leaning on rock that softened under his palm.

Can you still get down to the sea in the Grotta del Turco?

Not on foot. A long staircase once descended to the water; it was shortened for safety reasons. The shortened route still reaches the point where the light off the waves is visible, and the park runs canoe trips to the grotto for anyone who wants it from sea level.

Is there an admission charge?

No. The park authority states that the sanctuary, held by the missionaries of P.I.M.E., is freely visitable.

Why is there a chapel inside the crack?

Because a boulder fell into it. By some historical accounts a large block broke away from above in 1434 and wedged between the walls of the second fissure, over the grotto's sea entrance; in the sixteenth century the Cappella del Crocifisso was built on it.

How old is the sanctuary?

The Gaeta sanctuary is recorded as early as the eleventh century and was built by Benedictine monks. Its present appearance is the result of nineteenth-century restorations by the Alcantarine fathers.

What is the best season?

Spring or autumn, for the bird migration over the promontory -- the park calls it the most notable aspect of the site's fauna.