When one thinks of Emilia, it is natural to picture plains, embankments, and cultivated fields. Yet, a third of this land is mountainous, a diverse and surprising Apennine landscape, where rock outcrops emerge amidst forests and ridges, telling the stories of those who, over the years, have sought out vertical terrain here, too.

In these mountains, which barely exceed two thousand meters in elevation and lie suspended between the plains and the sea, climbers from Emilia have never been afraid to "make do with what’s there." They have searched, explored, and bolted every meter of climbable rock, transforming small, forgotten faces into crags and adventure playgrounds, ascending features that might have seemed insignificant, loose, or monotonous elsewhere. It is from this stubborn, genuine hunger for rock that Emilia Rock was born.

This guidebook aims to document the climbs and routes established across the provinces of Parma, Reggio Emilia, Modena, and Bologna, comprising over 1,300 single-pitch climbs and more than 150 multi-pitch routes. It is a journey through the climbing scene in Emilia, featuring sandstone, arenaria-macigno (a specific type of sandstone-conglomerate), and ophiolite. The book covers everything from the most well-known and popular crags and routes to adventurous expeditions, forgotten lines that have been rediscovered, and new routes established in recent years.

Alessandro Iotti works as a business consultant, but he devotes his free time to the mountains in all their forms. Since 2017, he has managed ferrate365.it, the go-to online resource for via ferrata routes in Italy.

Federico Rossetti is an alpinist by passion and a writer on mountain subjects by vocation. He approaches the mountains driven by a desire for exploration, rediscovery, and adventure. In 2020, he founded Mountain Communication, a communications agency dedicated to promoting entities connected to the world of the mountains.