Rotonda

Rotonda is a mountain town in the heart of Pollino National Park, sitting on a rocky outcrop at around 580 meters above sea level in the fertile Mercure Valley, ringed by peaks approaching 1,900 meters. It is today the administrative seat of the national park. The name is first recorded in a document from 1083 and is generally explained by the round arrangement of the old houses clustered below the ruined castle; some historians place it on the site of the ancient settlement of Nerulum. The town's Natural and Paleontological Museum holds the fossil skeleton of an ancient elephant (Elephas antiquus italicus), estimated at several hundred thousand years old, discovered in the Mercure Valley in 1982.