Campoli Appennino: truffles and bears on the rim of a sinkhole

Campoli Appennino enjoys one of the strangest settings of any village in Italy: its medieval houses curve in a ring along the very edge of a vast karst sinkhole, locally called the Tomolo, some six hundred and thirty metres across and a hundred and thirty deep. Perched at 650 metres in the Comino valley of the province of Frosinone, within the National Park of Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise, it proudly styles itself the town of the bear and the truffle.

Bears in the dolina

Since 2010 the great hollow has housed a wildlife area for the Marsican brown bear, created with the national park, where rescued bears can be observed from a path inside the sinkhole, alongside a visitor centre devoted to this rare Apennine subspecies, which sometimes wanders to the very edge of the village.

The land of truffles

The woods of Campoli are exceptionally rich in prized black and white truffles, gathered here for centuries, and each November the national truffle fair fills the old streets with stalls, tastings and even contests for truffle dogs. The village keeps its Lombard tower, twenty-five metres high, stretches of medieval wall, and the remains of a Roman villa with a fish mosaic.

How to get there

Campoli Appennino lies near Sora, on the border between Lazio and Abruzzo, roughly fifty kilometres east of Frosinone and within the Abruzzo national park.