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REGIONAL RESERVE OF ROCK ART ENGRAVINGS OF CETO-CIMBERGO-PASPARDO
 
The Regional Reserve of Rock Art Engravings of Ceto-Cimbergo-Paspardo, placed in the middle of the Camonica Valley in Brescia District, was established by Lombard Region in 1983 thanks to indications of three municipalities, Ceto, Cimbergo and Paspardo, and the Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, in order to protect a wide area where there are prehistoric rock engravings, together with a series of important ethnological and environmental elements concerning the evolution of the Alps in the past thousand years: old paths, megalithic walls, remains of prehistoric walled villages, farmsteads, prehistoric and medieval agricultural terraces, chestnut groves and microclimatic precincts.
 
Essential characters
 
  		•  The Regional Reserve is over 2.900.000 mq., covered with chestnuts and birch-trees. It is situated inside the road which linked the towns of Nadro, Cimbergo and Paspardo, centres of very old origin and that still kept intact the old medieval nuclei.
     
  		•  The Regional Reserve admittance point is in Nadro, where, into the Museum, it has residence and ticket office. The others admittance points are in Cimbergo, for the areas of Campanine-Figna and Coren del Valento, and in Paspardo, for Capitello dei Due Pini-Dos di Cüsta Peta, In Valle, Dos Sottolaiolo and Deria.
     
  		•  The prehistoric Rock Art is the principal element of the Regional Reserve: signs, images, symbols engraved on rocks in open air by ancient people that settled in this valley. The studies led by Centro Camuno di Studi Preistorici, that has the scientific direction of the Reserve, bore to individualization of historic and cultural evolution of inhabitants and to identification of "figurative cycles" corresponding to civilization and periods that succeeded during Millennia: first of all farmers-pickers-hunters in the Neolithic Age (IV Millennium B. C.), then through the Calcolithic revolution during III Millennium B. C., until the Bronze and the Iron Age (II and I Millennia B. C.).
     
  		•  These important documents, added in the "World Heritage List" by UNESCO in 1979, in relation with natural environment of the Regional Reserve are testimonies of a long process of evolution in the Alpine area.