Monte Rotondo, Mountain summit in Marche, Italy

Monte Rotondo is a limestone summit in the Sibillini Mountains reaching 2,101 meters, with steep rocky sides and exposed stone formations. The mountain's slopes are open grassland and scree that hikers can navigate via established trails toward the top.

In the 16th century the abbey linked to the mountain passed to commendatory abbots who drained its revenues, and the monks moved to Santa Maria presso Meriggio, founded in the year 1000 and later enlarged as the Abbazia di Santa Maria di Rio Sacro. Almost nothing of the old monastery remains; traces of its ruins lie in the dense forest. Much of the mountain belonged in the last century to the Ussita family Gasparri, whose cardinal Pietro Gasparri signed the Lateran Pacts; the farmhouse bearing their name still stands at the head of the Valle del Rio Sacro.

The mountain's name comes from its rounded main summit, and the massif's slopes belong to the Fiastrone river basin, whose main tributaries rise here. In the last century much of the mountain was owned by the Ussita family Gasparri; Cardinal Pietro Gasparri, who signed the Lateran Pacts, was its best-known member. A farmhouse at the head of the Rio Sacro valley still bears the family name.

The massif lies in the province of Macerata, between Bolognola, Ussita and the former Acquacanina. The Acquasanta waterfall is reached by an easy path from Bolognola, after which the valley narrows into an inaccessible gorge. The south face holds climbing routes up to 150 m long on the limestone slabs called sghiacce, above the hamlet of Casali.

On the south-western slope of Croce di Monte Rotondo, snow-retaining barriers were installed after an avalanche in the 1990s came down from the slope and reached the edge of Vallestretta without damaging houses. The track left by the avalanche, which dragged all vegetation downhill, is still visible.