The oldest image is a drawing made in 1842 by the famous German geologist and astronomer Wolfgang Sartorius of Waltershausen entitled "View of Etna taken from the Serravalle Bridge near Bronte". Today it is in a state of total abandonment, degradation and even extreme danger. Under the bridge, a crack steep and impracticable, initially few meters wide and deep, between eighty and one hundred meters high, squeezed between colored basalt walls, enlarges then, for kilometers, luxuriant of vegetation and animal life, among majestic basalt walls. The photographs on the page only partially convey the beauty of the places and the majesty of a site that is still almost untouched; in the video on the right our camera enters the gorges showing them to you in all their majesty.
Going down along the river
 Going down along the river, in several points, are particularly interesting the formations of polygonal lava, or basalt colonnade, due to the sudden cooling of the lava flow in contact to the Simeto waters, the ample lava terraces that testify the expansion of the volcanic edifice over the territories occupied before by sedimentary outcrop and the typical vegetation that assumes particular features with the Oleander presence, the bush euphorbia, able to grow and branch out over the lava.
Over the river gravel bank can be found the inundations constituted both by pebbles of lava, of various color, and by sands, gravel and pebbles of sedimentary origin coming down exactly from the Nebrodi. It is not rare to find amber' pebbles and shells, light-colored that always attract the searchers and that tell us of a far geologic past. The large stony riverbed is often occupied by typical river bank vegetation: canes and oleanders that in spring assume a magnificent blooming. The agricultural landscape is typical of Bronte, with old zones often subjected to floods, changed in fruit orchards, with the very stony ground where the Bronte's farmer has planted vast Pistachio cultivations, and, in some spots, occupied by grazing land steep and degraded, that among the grass cover, the clayey soil characteristics, with large groves, narrow and deep and with steep ridges towards the tops. Around a contrasted landscape and a deeply varied nature, aized tree cultivations that go from the fruit orchards (pears, peaches, etc.) to the clayey pastures alternating with steep lava fields cultivated to pistachio, citrus fruit orchards, olive or almond trees, vegetables, prickly pears, wheat and cereal fields.  The fauna component of this ecosystem comprises some reptiles (The collar snake, the viper snake, the leopard snake, maybe the best looking European snake long up to one meter), the lizards (Ramarro, Lacerta viridis o la Podarcis sicula) that hide among the vegetation or among stones and rocks, some amphibious rare species (the Discoglosso), some frogs and toads that live near the river (Bufo bufo spinosus and Bufo viridis) Rare and nearly absolutely absent the fish fauna.
The birds population comprises several species sedentary and others migratory: it is not rare to see the ash heron or the egret (Ardea cinerea), they make here a brief stop on their way to zones richer of their preferred foods. In the vegetation near the river can be found birds (the Porciglione) less adapt to fly and they find a typical hiding among the canes, some species of birds of prey as the Hawk, the Kestrel and others. It is not difficult to see and meet the Barn Owl, while in the areas planted with more trees are more frequent other species of Owl. The mammals appear as roaming, coming, in the majority, from close by areas: the Fox, the Porcupine, the Curly, the wild Rabbit and the Hare. The protected zone of the grottoes is still an uncontaminated natural habitat. The wild nature of the site, the evident difficulty and the dangerousness to build in it, have, till now, preserved and saved from any speculation this wonderful area. It is at a few kilometers from Bronte and starts at the bridges of Cantera and Serravalle. With due precaution can be visited. Especially in Summer, you can get to the small natural habitat going down on foot along the gravel bank and go on, even with some difficulty, to the bridge of Passo Paglia district.
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The integral nature reserve of the "Forre laviche del Simeto" (Simeto lava gorges) is a Site of Community Interest (identified with the code ITA070026), established in 2000 by the Ministry of the Environment with the aim of safeguarding and conserving natural and semi-natural habitats, as well as wild flora and fauna of the upper Simeto basin.
It protects the entire stretch of the Alto Simeto, in which the most ancient Etna lavas, reaching the old course of the river, have crossed it several times and have then been dug and eroded by it with deep incisions, splendid gorges, caves, bends, waterfalls and lakes, which - set in the black basalt and the surrounding environment - create landscapes of rare beauty and charm. The management of the reserve has been entrusted to the State Forestry Company of Sicily.
Bronte' zone represents the initial tract of the river, and surely, the wildest, where the waters play games of skill and acrobatics with the black lava, while the observer can look astonished at the power that this river, in spite of the enormous damages that our inexhaustible greed has inflicted to its life, continues to display.
They are covered, especially in the spring season, by vegetation typical of the so-called Mediterranean scrub such as wild olive, holm oak, hackberry, prickly pear plants, capable of surviving the floods and heat of summer, but also the winter frost, hosting very rare fauna.
The Cŕntera bridge under which the Forre begins is of Norman origin: it was built by Count Ruggiero II "the Norman" in 1121 in memory of his mother Adelasia, who died in Patti in 1118.
The lava ravine is a very deep cut,
The Norman bridge across the river, a very daring piece of work composed by hydrodynamic piers that hold medieval arcades of a humpbacked bridge, is characterized by the use of local basaltic stones, alternating to ashlars of white tuff, with a chromatic effect truly particular.
For the safeguard, the conservation and the protection of the particular environmental value of the lava grottoes, of the waterfalls and the small lakes created by the Simeto and of the typical vegetation of the river's banks and also of the specialized fauna component that lives in the zone, there are regional safeguard laws.
