{"id":5520,"date":"2023-01-18T05:00:21","date_gmt":"2023-01-18T10:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/?p=5520"},"modified":"2023-01-18T05:00:23","modified_gmt":"2023-01-18T10:00:23","slug":"holiday-guide-to-basilicata-italy-what-to-see-plus-the-best-restaurants-and-hotels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/2023\/01\/18\/holiday-guide-to-basilicata-italy-what-to-see-plus-the-best-restaurants-and-hotels\/","title":{"rendered":"Holiday guide to Basilicata, Italy: what to see plus the best restaurants and hotels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u2018Tourist hordes\u2019 is not a phrase you\u2019re likely to hear in Basilicata but given its rich cuisine, stunning national parks, ancient towns and great beaches, it\u2019s hard to fathom why this seductive region remains so quiet.<\/p>

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New dawn \u2026 ancient Matera is preparing to be European Capital of Culture in 2019.\u00a0
Photograph: Getty Images<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>

The Guardian – I<\/strong>magine 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\u2019s 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\u2019s boot, has all the above but \u2013 thanks admittedly to a history of poverty and difficult access \u2013 little mass tourism.<\/p>

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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\u2019 drive way too, but as Basilicata\u2019s beaches and main sights are in the south, Bari will suit most.<\/p>

MATERA<\/strong><\/h2>
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Old cave houses of Matera converted into the Basiliani hotel<\/sup><\/figcaption><\/figure>

What to see and do<\/strong>
The cave houses,\u00a0Sassi<\/strong>, 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: \u201cIn these dark holes with walls cut out of the earth I saw a few miserable beds, and some rags hanging up \u2026 I have never in my life seen such a picture of poverty.\u201d<\/p>

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\u2019s Mary Magdalene.<\/p>

Read more here<\/a><\/div><\/div>

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\u2018Tourist hordes\u2019 is not a phrase you\u2019re likely to hear in Basilicata but given its rich cuisine, stunning national parks, ancient towns and great beaches, it\u2019s hard to fathom why…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5522,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[290,1078],"class_list":{"0":"post-5520","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-basilicata","9":"tag-holiday-in-italy"},"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Matera.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5524,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5520\/revisions\/5524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/panoramitalia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}