People & Places We Love in Basilicata
We believe the best way to share Italy is to celebrate the people who make it extraordinary.
Il Vulture
An extinct volcano in northern Basilicata. Its ancient lava flows created the soils that produce Aglianico del Vulture — one of Italy's great red wines. Twin crater lakes, a cliff-face…
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San Fele
A stone village perched between two mountains in the Vulture. Population crashed from 10,000 to 3,000 through emigration. Danny DeVito's grandparents left from here. Ten waterfalls, a sanctuary celebrated since…
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Masseria Torre Fiore
A 16th-century masseria in Pisticci, restored by the Giannone family — Lucani who emigrated to Toronto and came back to build something. Your home base on the Basilicata tour.
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Potenza
Italy's highest regional capital at 819 metres, overlooking the Basento Valley. A city of staircases, medieval churches, and the National Archaeological Museum.
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Il Forno di Gennaro
A family bakery in Matera since 1890. You knead, shape, and bake your own Pane di Matera with Patrizia, Sabrina, and master baker Enzo. In the Sassi, women made five-kilo…
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Castelgrande
A tiny mountain village of 740 people with a National Geographic food feature, a saffron initiative, and a Montreal diaspora.
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Azienda Agricola Elena Fucci
Her family was about to sell the vineyard. Elena said no — and turned six hectares on an extinct volcano into one of Italy's great wines.
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Palazzo San Gervasio
Named after Frederick II's 13th-century hunting palace. A city surrounded by wheat, tomatoes, Aglianico vines, peppers and olive trees.
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Azienda Agricola Mantenera
Andrea was riding his motorbike across Italy looking for a place to start over. A country road led him to an ancient olive grove with a Vendesi sign. Some of…
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Podolico Reale
Mariantonietta Vaccaro could have done a chemistry doctorate. She chose her family's herd of wild Podolica cows above Brindisi Montagna — and the four-generation art of caciocavallo podolico.
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Craco
A medieval town abandoned on a clay cliff — but its people, the Crachesi, are alive, in the valley below and scattered across the world. This is their story, and…
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Pisticci
Pisticci—the White City—is at the heart of our Basilicata tour. Adele Newton's parents emigrated from here. The town was founded 3,000 years ago, and it's still standing.
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Matera
People have lived in these caves for almost 10,000 years. Our guests spend two nights here, sleeping in a hotel cut into the Sassi rock, and kneading and baking the…
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Castelmezzano
You enter through a tunnel carved into the rock face. When you come out the other side, a medieval village is clinging to sandstone pinnacles above you. One of Italy's…
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Policoro
The last day of the tour. After a week of mountains and hill towns, we come down to the Ionian coast, and lunch overlooking the sea.
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Dimore dell’Idris
This is an albergo diffuso—a hotel of rooms carved into the raw rock. You sleep like the ancient Materani, except with a first-class upgrade!
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Gelateria Caruso
Pina Caruso is the most genuine and generous gelato-maker I know. Her family has made gelato since 1926, and her award-winning Acheruntino—milk cream with vin cotto, toasted almonds, and toasted…
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Lucanian Calanchi
The defining landscape of inner Basilicata— bare clay gullies, razor-thin ridges, and pale eroded slopes. The unstable clay that Craco was built on, and that betrayed it.
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Lucanian Dolomites
Sandstone spires that glow amber at dusk and pink at dawn. Two medieval villages — Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa — cling to the cliffs among formations named the Golden Eagle, the…
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Maratea
A town on the Gulf of Policastro, with the turquoise waters of the Tyrrhenian sea and volcanic black sand beaches. And a Cristo Redentore.
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