page_title: Apennine Mountains
section_title: Major peaks
hierarchical_section_title: Apennine Mountains / Major peaks
caption_attribution_description: Il versante settentrionale di serra Dolcedorme (dalla cima meridionale di Serra delle Ciavole)
context_page_description: The Apennines or Apennine Mountains are a mountain range consisting of parallel smaller chains extending c. 1,200 km along the length of peninsular Italy. In the northwest they join with the Ligurian Alps at Altare. In the southwest they end at Reggio di Calabria, the coastal city at the tip of the peninsula. Since 2000 the Environment Ministry of Italy, following the recommendations of the Apennines Park of Europe Project, has been defining the Apennines System to include the mountains of north Sicily, for a total distance of 1,500 kilometres. The system forms an arc enclosing the east side of the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian Seas.
  The Apennines conserve some intact ecosystems that have survived human intervention. In these are some of the best preserved forests and montane grasslands in Europe, now protected by national parks and, within them, a high diversity of flora and fauna. These mountains are one of the last refuges of the big European predators such as the Italian wolf and the marsican brown bear, now extinct in the rest of Central Europe.
  The mountains lend their name to the Apennine peninsula that forms the major part of Italy.
context_section_description: The Apennines include about 21 peaks over 1,900 m (6,200 ft), the approximate tree line (counting only the top peak in each massif). Most of these peaks are located in the Central Apennines.
caption: Serra Dolcedorme, the highest summit in Southern Apennine
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