Campo Imperatore is the high plateau of the Gran Sasso, some 18 kilometers long and up to 8 wide, between about 1,500 and 2,100 meters, and locals call it Little Tibet after the mountaineer Fosco Maraini compared it to a Tibetan valley.
It is a wide, treeless pasture that turns green in June, grazed by sheep and horses, under the rock wall of Corno Grande, the highest peak of the Apennines. At the top of the cable car stands the hotel where Mussolini was held prisoner in 1943 before his rescue by German paratroopers under Otto Skorzeny; beside it are an astronomical observatory and an alpine botanical garden. Spaghetti Westerns and Ladyhawke were shot here.
