Aurunci Mountains

The Monti Aurunci (or Aurunci Mountains) is a mountain range of southern Lazio, in central Italy. It is part of the Antiappennini, a group running from the Apennines chain to the Tyrrhenian Sea, where it forms the promontory of Gaeta. It is bounded to the north-west by the Ausoni Mountains, to the north by the Liri river, to the east by the Ausente, to the south-east by the Garigliano and to the south by the Tyrrhenian sea. The line between the Aurunci and the Ausoni has not been clearly established but the Aurunci are considered by convention to be east of a line through Fondi, Lenola, Pico, S. Giovanni and Incarico. Altitudes vary from hills to the 1,533 m of Monte Petrella. Main peaks include the Redentore (1,252 m) and Monte Sant'Angelo (1,402 m). They include a regional park, the Parco Naturale dei Monti Aurunci, created in 1997. The mountains take the name from the ancient tribe of the Aurunci, an offshoot of the Ausoni. Both tribes were derived from the Italic people who were called by the Romans the Volsci; hence, the Monti Lepini, the Monti Ausoni and the Monti Aurunci are also called the Volsci or Volscian Chain. Coincidentally they are all of the same karst topography and have the same orogeny, which is not quite the same as the Apennines proper.

The Monti Aurunci mainly consist of friable limestone, which becomes harder toward Gaeta. The degree of faulting and cracking is so high that the mountains retain no rainfall; it sinks in to emerge as springs (and used as wells) on the lower flanks. The stream beds are dry except for vernal pools. Most generally, the western-central coastal region of Italy is the front of a subduction zone where the African Plate moving locally from southwest to northeast is carried under the European Plate. There is some counterclockwise rotation of Italy; hence the faults in the Tyrrhenian Sea slip both parallel to the shoreline and perpendicular to it. The surface rock in the Anti-Apennines was deposited on the floor of Tethys Sea during the Jurassic and Cretaceous of the Mesozoic. This lighter calcareous rock rides over the front of the subduction zone, uplifted by compressional and isostatic forces. Just behind it is a

Location: Italy.

Mountain range data from Wikidata (CC0). Elevation is the height of the highest peak.