TMQE Travels 2021 || ITALY - Basilicata: Matera, Castelmezzano, Craco (travel tips)

TMQE Travels are travelling again! This time it’s Basilicata, a region of Italy in the far south, adjacent to Puglia, where we visit the Matera, Castelmezzano, Craco and Melfi.
Jérémy and Ben here again! We love to travel and to satisfy our wanderlust, we are on a European roadtrip exploring the best places for a city break on the continent. We love to escape Britain to experience the best culture, cuisine and attractions that Europe has to offer. If you’re a tourist like us and just need a good itinerary for what to do and how to do it when you’re in Basilicata, we will show you the best things to put on your itinerary.
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Transcript:

Basilicata is in the far south of Italy, sitting west of Puglia where we were staying for a week. We couldn’t resist straying into this region, tempted by the lure of Matera, the region’s capital which was the European Capital of Culture in 2019.

En route we discovered that Basilicata is crammed with some amazing towns and villages that are relatively untouched by tourism and make for some amazing photos. Like Castelmezzano, a mountaintop village that literally clings to the side of the cliff for dear life and you can only access through a tunnel. Or a zipwire from the town at the top of the neighbouring mountain. No really, you can actually do that.

This is not the Italy of Renaissance, or Gothic, or even Roman architecture. This is Medieval Italy, where easily defendable castles are perched at the top of mountains, with rustic towns of farmers and labourers living on the slopes below. The streets zig-zag like a lattice of alleys, barely navigable on foot, let alone by car. You’ve got to be really good at hill-starts if you want to drive your car around here. And not bump into the back of a parked vehicle, like I did in our hire car.

The landscape is vast, rolling and desolate, with open plains and rocky crags as far as the eye can see. We headed to one of the most remote spots in the region, a remarkable town called Craco. It’s not remarkable for the beauty of its architecture. In fact, it’s remarkable for exactly the opposite. In 1980, the ancient hill-top town was abandoned after a massive earthquake left it in ruins. The properties are all still privately owned by their original inhabitants, but because the whole area is unsafe none of them have been able to return. However, the town itself is open to tourists with a guided tour, on which you get to wander these surreal streets and observe the slow reclamation of Mother Nature. Today, the town is a cluster of ruins leaning precariously, barely still standing, looming high above the vast plains below. There’s something quite beautiful about its ugliness.

The crown jewel of Basilicata is Matera. And it has been for a very long time. In fact, the city can actually lay claim to the title of the Oldest Continuously Inhabited City in the ENTIRE world! At its centre is a vast UNESCO World Heritage Site – The Sassi – a complex of cave dwellings that date back as far as the Palaeolithic Era, which were inhabited by cave-dwellers – known as troglodytes, ever since. Dug into the calcareous rock, the caves were the houses of normal working people, living on the steep cliff-sides of the Gravina River. An area of extreme poverty for centuries, the houses were unsanitary, with disease rife amongst their crowded streets. With a lack of sanitation, damp living quarters and a high crime rate, it was considered one of the most deprived places in all of Italy.

If you’re interested in just how the troglodytes used to live, one of the caves has been preserved exactly as it was at the start of the twentieth century, with several generations of one family and their animals all living in one room. Each one of the dwellings is known as a sasso, which all together are the sassi. In an attempt to resolve the area’s considerable problems, the Sassi were mostly cleared oftheir residents in the 1950s by the Italian government, moving the people to new accommodation and leaving the slum to fall into disrepair. It is only since the area was recognised by UNESCO that its cultural significance has been recognised worldwide.

The European Capital of Culture in 2019, the city has recently received vast cash investment, leaving it very well equipped for tourism. Just like many of Italy’s cities, Matera feels like you’re walking through a living museum. But unlike the country’s grander cities, Matera feels less like a collection of monuments and more like a relic of its common people, who lived and died in its vast cave networks for millennia.

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