Introducing Basilicata
Basilicata has an otherworldly landscape of tremendous mountain ranges, dark forested valleys and villages so melded with the rockface that they seem to have grown there.
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Since the 1930s this land has been inseparable from the name of writer Carlo Levi. His superb book Christ Stopped at Eboli documented the harsh life of Basilicata’s poverty-stricken peasants, and even its title suggests that Basilicata was beyond the hand of God. The discovery of Western Europe’s largest oilfield 30km south of Potenza in 1996, should have altered the view of Basilicata as a poor wild region beyond commercial development, but the stereotype lingers.
However, today Basilicata’s remote atmosphere and tremendous landscape is attracting the attention of travellers. The Passion of Christ – the gospel according to Mel Gibson – brought the extraordinary sassi (stone houses) of Matera to the world’s attention, while Maratea is one of Italy’s most chic seaside resorts. The purple-hued mountains of the interior are impossibly grand, a wonderful destination for naturalists, particularly the soaring peaks of the Lucanian Apennines and the Parco Nazionale del Pollino.
Last updated: Mar 2, 2009
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Italy’s secret caves: the sassi of Matera
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In the remote southern Italian region of Basilicata is the unique and ancient cave-city of Matera, famous for its sassi...
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