The National Park of Rock Engravings was established in 1955, the first archaeological park in Italy, to protect and enhance one of the most important complexes of rocks with prehistoric and protohistoric engravings in the Val Camonica. It covers an area of 143,935 square meters in Località Naquane, on the left hydrographic side of the Val Camonica, between 400 and 600 meters above sea level.
National Park of Rock Engravings in Val Camonica, UNESCO Heritage Site
Inside, it houses 104 rocks, made of sandstone polished by glaciers, engraved with some of the most well-known depictions in the rock art repertoire of Val Camonica, recognized by UNESCO in 1979 as a World Heritage Site (site no. 94 “Rock Art of Val Camonica”, the first Italian site listed) for the uniqueness of the phenomenon and the importance of the scientific contribution that the study of the engravings has brought to the knowledge of human prehistory. Rock art developed in Val Camonica between the end of the Upper Paleolithic (between 13,000 and 10,000 years ago) and the Iron Age (1st millennium BC), a period of particular flourishing, which however continued also in historical, Roman, medieval, and modern times.
The Park was created to protect, preserve, enhance, and promote the knowledge of rock art heritage. Moreover, as a cultural place, according to the definition of the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape (Legislative Decree January 22, 2004, no. 42, art. 101, c. 2, e: “archaeological park”, a territorial area characterized by important archaeological evidences and the coexistence of historical, landscape, or environmental values, equipped as an open-air museum), it is intended for public use and provides a public service (art. 101, c. 3). In addition to the archaeological constraint, there is also a landscape constraint, established by Ministerial Decree of 14.04.1967.
The Park is state-owned and managed by the Superintendent for Archaeological Heritage of Lombardy, a peripheral body of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism.
The Val Camonica is world-famous for its extraordinary complex of engravings on rocks, mostly dating back to Prehistory. While the iconographic heritage of these ancient peoples is known to the broad public, the aspects of their daily life are less known, emerging only in the last 30 years thanks to numerous preventive archaeology interventions and research carried out in the Valley. Various settlements, workplaces, places of worship, and burials are attributable to these communities, known as Camunni from the Iron Age onwards.
National Museum of Prehistory of Val Camonica, Capo di Ponte
The National Museum of Prehistory, in Val Camonica, housed in the ancient Villa Agostani building in the historic center of Capo di Ponte and inaugurated on May 10, 2014, integrates the heritage of images engraved on rocks with the exhibit of artifacts, reassembling in an inseparable whole the identity expression of Val Camonica.
