Learn about Basilicata

Basilicata is one of Italy's few regions with coastlines on two different seas -- a short Tyrrhenian stretch around Maratea and a longer Ionian coast at Metaponto -- separated by a mostly mountainous interior that includes the extinct volcano Monte Vulture and the dramatic rock towers of the Dolomiti Lucane.

Basilicata's ancient name, Lucania, comes from the Lucani, an Italic people who controlled the region before Rome, while Greek colonists built Metapontum on the Ionian coast, where the philosopher Pythagoras spent his final years. Centuries of rule by Normans, Swabians, and the Kingdom of Naples left the region isolated and, by the 20th century, one of Italy's poorest -- a poverty made famous by Carlo Levi's memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, and one the region has only recently begun to reframe as heritage rather than hardship.

Basilicata's culture runs on what its land actually produces -- Aglianico wine from Monte Vulture's volcanic soil, peperoni cruschi (fried dried peppers), and bread from Matera, historically baked communally and stamped with a family mark. Accettura's Maggio festival, a pagan-rooted fertility rite involving the ceremonial «marriage» of two different trees dragged into the village together, remains one of Italy's most distinctive living folk traditions.

Basilicata's climate splits between a mild Mediterranean coast (both the Tyrrhenian around Maratea and the Ionian around Metaponto) and a noticeably colder, more continental mountainous interior, where the Pollino massif can see real winter snow.