‘Tourist hordes’ is not a phrase you’re likely to hear in Basilicata but given its rich cuisine, stunning national parks, ancient towns and great beaches, it’s hard to fathom why this seductive region remains so quiet.
Photograph: Getty Images
The Guardian – Imagine a region that has miles of white sand beaches on one coast, picturesque rocky bays on the other, two mountainous national parks, and one of the world’s oldest cities. Add lots of warm sunshine plus fine food and wine and you might expect the area to be a tourist mecca, busy with hotels and tour buses. However, Basilicata, the arch and instep of Italy’s boot, has all the above but – thanks admittedly to a history of poverty and difficult access – little mass tourism.
Though bigger than any English county, Basilicata is home to fewer than 600,000 people. And it shows: apart from a few very hot weeks in high summer, the region is blissfully quiet, its beaches and (now quite good) roads devoid of crowds. Access from the UK is now easy too, with cheap flights to Bari, in neighbouring Puglia. Naples airport is a couples of hours’ drive way too, but as Basilicata’s beaches and main sights are in the south, Bari will suit most.
MATERA
What to see and do
The cave houses, Sassi, of Matera are thought to be the first human dwellings in Italy, delved maybe 9,000 years ago. But by the 20th century they were places of inhuman squalor and penury. Author Carlo Levi, exiled to Basilicata by the fascists in the 1930s, wrote: “In these dark holes with walls cut out of the earth I saw a few miserable beds, and some rags hanging up … I have never in my life seen such a picture of poverty.”
The Sassi lay empty for decades after the war, their inhabitants rehoused, but from the 1980s people started moving back, modernising caves and converting them into hotels, bars and shops. Matera gained Unesco world heritage listing in 1993 and is now more prosperous, but there has been no jarring change in appearance or atmosphere. The steep steps, rocky outcrops and stone alleyways could be Babylon or biblical-era Jerusalem, and have been used in films including, recently, the 2016 remake of Ben Hur, Wonder Woman and this year’s Mary Magdalene.
