Keepers of the South

At a glance

This bakery has made Pane di Matera since 1890, and two sisters run it today. For generations the women of Matera made the bread while the men’s names were stamped on top. Not only will you learn how much of the women’s history is tied to this bread, but you’ll make your own loaf and taste plenty of delicious food.

Elena and her husband Andrea grow olives on a hillside in Basilicata, surrounded by forest. You’ll spend time in their home and experience firsthand what it means to farm in harmony with nature and the landscape—and to be unwilling to compromise when it comes to producing something truly excellent.

Taste a gelato at a counter in Castelmezzano, a village perched in the Lucanian Dolomites. Meet Pina Caruso, who translated the agricultural landscape of Basilicata in a single scoop — her Acheruntino: cooked wine, toasted almonds, and the same Pane di Matera you’ll make at the forno.

Meet Elena Fucci, who changed her career path when her family decided to sell the grandfather vineyard. She decided to study enology instead, and stayed. Today she makes a single wine, Titolo, the full expression of an extinct volcano, and you’ll sip your way through it over a long southern-Italian meal.

Walk the streets of Craco, a ghost town perched on a hilltop in Basilicata, in the middle of the badlands. After landslides made the town unsafe, its people left, many emigrating to the United States.

Roofs open to the sky, paint still on the walls, the abandoned town offers a tangible glimpse into southern Italy’s history of emigration.

You’ll sleep in a cave in the Sassi of Matera, in rooms carved into the rock where families lived for generations. In 1952, the government began forcing people to move out because of the poor living conditions. For decades, these homes stood empty. Today, many have been restored, and you’ll have the chance to experience what it feels like to sleep inside one.

Meet Mariantonietta Vaccaro, who turned down a chemistry doctorate to make caciocavallo podolico — a rare, cave-aged cheese from wild cows — four generations after her great-grandmother came to these mountains with two Podolica cows as her dowry.

Our week is built around the women of Basilicata — the ones who stayed. Each made the same stubborn, unlikely choice: to build something rare in a place most people were leaving. Here are two of them: One turned down a doctorate to make cheese at nine hundred metres. Another refused to let her family sell the vineyard she’d grown up in, on the slopes of an extinct volcano, and now makes a wine critics count among Italy’s greatest. You’ll spend the week with them.

And you’ll meet them backstage — in the kitchens, groves, and cellars where the work actually happens, not in a demonstration arranged for visitors.

We build the week around food, because food is how Basilicata speaks in the present tense. The region has history to spare; we’ve chosen to show you its today.

Most tours give Basilicata a day. A glance at Matera, then back on the bus to Puglia. We want you to go deeper. And yes, you’ll be comfortable—with beautiful boutique hotels full of character and a private driver for the group. But for us, luxury isn’t just about comfort. It’s about knowing where to go, who to meet, and what is worth making time for—and creating the kind of access and personal connections that would be difficult to find on your own, even while traveling as part of a group.