Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
BASILICATA
Basilicata has an other-worldly landscape of tremendous mountain ranges, dark forested
valleys and villages so melded with the rockface that they seem to have grown there. Its
isolated yet strategic location on routes linking ancient Rome to the eastern Byzantine em-
pire has seen it successively invaded, pillaged, plundered, abandoned and neglected.
In the north the landscape is a fertile zone of gentle hills and deep valleys - once covered
in thick forests, now cleared and cultivated with wheat, olives and grapes. The purple-hued
mountains of the interior are impossibly grand and a wonderful destination for hikers and
naturalists, particularly the soaring peaks of the Lucanian Apennines and the Parco
Nazionale del Pollino.
On the coast, Maratea is one of Italy's most chic seaside resorts. However, Matera is Ba-
silicata's star attraction, the famous
sassi
(former cave dwellings) of the cave city presiding
over a rugged landscape of ravines and caves. Its ancient cave dwellings tell a tale of
poverty, hardship and struggle; its history is best immortalised in writer Carlo Levi's superb
book
Christ Stopped at Eboli
- a title suggesting Basilicata was beyond the hand of God, a
place where pagan magic still existed and thrived.
Today, Basilicata is attracting a slow but steadily increasing trickle of tourists. For those
wanting to experience a raw and unspoilt region of Italy, Basilicata's remote atmosphere
and wild landscape will appeal.
