The protected area includes the magnificent Cannuccete forest. It consists of ancient trees, mainly maples, oaks and hornbeams, which have escaped being cut down thanks to a restriction that has been in place for centuries to protect certain springs. These springs, thanks to a partly underground aqueduct, supplied Praeneste (hence the name of the local Prenestini mountains). Their trunks provide shelter for green woodpeckers, great spotted woodpeckers, wrynecks, nuthatches, tits and nocturnal birds of prey such as tawny owls and scops owls. Local legend has it that the musician Pierluigi da Palestrina loved to sit under a colossal oak tree, perhaps seven centuries old.