Basilicata historical timeline

Origins

Before Roman conquest, the region was home to the Lucani, an Italic people whose name survives in Basilicata's older name, Lucania, still used locally today. On the Ionian coast, Greek colonists founded Metapontum in the 7th century BC, one of the wealthiest cities of Magna Graecia -- the philosopher and mathematician Pythagoras settled there after leaving Croton, and died in Metapontum around 495 BC.

Turning points

After Roman rule, the region passed through Byzantine, Lombard, Norman, and Swabian control, eventually becoming part of the Kingdom of Naples and later the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Its mountainous isolation meant it was rarely a priority for whichever power controlled it, leaving Basilicata chronically underdeveloped -- a condition that persisted after Italian unification in 1861 and worsened through the early 20th century, driving heavy emigration abroad. The Sassi di Matera, cave dwellings inhabited for millennia, had by the mid-20th century become a national symbol of poverty and disease, prompting the Italian government to forcibly evacuate and relocate the Sassi's roughly 15,000 residents in 1952.

Influential people

Carlo Levi, a writer and painter exiled to Basilicata by the Fascist government in the 1930s, wrote Christ Stopped at Eboli, a memoir that brought the region's poverty to national and international attention and remains the best-known account of pre-war rural southern Italy. Pythagoras, though Greek rather than Lucanian, is inseparable from the region's ancient history through his final years in Metapontum.

Cultural evolution

Decades after the Sassi's evacuation, changing attitudes toward historic preservation -- and a 1993 UNESCO World Heritage listing -- transformed Matera's cave district from an emblem of shame into one of Italy's most celebrated restoration stories, culminating in Matera's designation as European Capital of Culture in 2019. That same shift in perspective has extended to the wider region's own folk traditions, from Accettura's ancient tree-marriage festival to Aglianico winemaking on Monte Vulture's volcanic slopes.

Present-day significance

Modern Basilicata remains one of Italy's least populous and least visited regions, but Matera's transformation has made it a genuine case study in heritage-led revival, drawing filmmakers (its cave streets have stood in for ancient Jerusalem in several major productions) and travelers seeking an Italy that feels unmistakably real rather than restored for tourism.