Gran Paradiso National Park protects an area characterized mainly by an alpine environment. The mountains that make up the range, in the past have been cut and modelled by giant glaciers and by streams that created the valleys that we see today.
In the forests of the valley floor the most common trees are larches, mixed with spruces, Swiss stone pines and more rarely silver firs. Higher up the slopes the trees gradually thin out and make way for vast alpine pastures, rich with flowers in late spring. Rising even more up ultil 4061 m of the Gran Paradiso only rocks and glaciers characterize the landscape.