Basilicata Travel Guide

Basilicata fills the arch of the Italian boot, a landlocked land save for two short coasts, a sliver of Tyrrhenian cliff at Maratea and a low Ionian shore in the south.

The interior is almost entirely mountain and hill, from the wooded slopes of the Pollino, Italy's largest national park, to the extinct volcano of Monte Vulture and the sandstone pinnacles of the Dolomiti Lucane. The Romans called it Lucania, and the older name still carries the region's proud, austere character.

This is one of the last quiet corners of the peninsula, a place of stone villages and wide silence. At its heart stands Matera, whose Sassi, the cave dwellings carved into a ravine, passed from a byword for poverty to a UNESCO World Heritage Site and European Capital of Culture. The Lucanian table is frugal and forceful, built on bread, peperoni cruschi, the crisp dried sweet peppers, and the deep red Aglianico del Vulture grown on volcanic soil.

Come in late spring or early autumn, when the highlands are walkable and the hill towns belong to those who climb them.

The Lucanian table is frugal and forceful, built on bread, peperoni cruschi, the crisp dried sweet peppers, and the deep red Aglianico del Vulture grown on volcanic soil.

Where to base yourself

Craco

An abandoned hill town rising on a pedestal of clay badlands, emptied after a landslide in 1963. Its roofless houses and lone tower have made it a haunting film location, a ghost town frozen above the calanchi.

The Craco guide