In 1950, the writer Carlo Levi described Matera as 'the shame of Italy' in Christ Stopped at Eboli — the cave city where 15,000 people were still living in the sassi (the ancient cave dwellings) without running water, without sanitation, in conditions he described as mediaeval. The Italian government forcibly relocated the sassi residents to new housing in the 1950s–1960s. In 2019, Matera was the European Capital of Culture, receiving 1 million visitors. The moral of the story depends on whether you think the government was right to move the residents — and Basilicata will hold that conversation with you if you ask.
Read the guide →Matera (population 60,000, Matera province) is the most geographically extraordinary city in Italy — the sassi (the cave dwellings cut into the two ravines — the Sasso Caveoso and the Sasso Barisano — that flank the Matera plateau) are the longest continuously inhabited human settlement in Europe, documented from at least 7000 BC (Neolithic evidence) and continuously occupied until the forced relocation of 1952–1963. The city's current character: the sassi have been progressively restored since the 1980s (the UNESCO designation 1993 catalysed significant investment) and are now the city's primary accommodation zone — cave hotels and boutique restaurants occupy the same spaces where families of 12 lived with their animals within living memory.
The specific Matera itinerary: Day 1 morning: The Sasso Caveoso circuit (the southern and older ravine — the most intact sassi architecture, the rupestri churches carved directly into the ravine walls: the Santa Maria de Idris, the Santa Lucia alle Malve, the Cripta del Peccato Originale 9km outside Matera). The cave church circuit on foot takes approximately 3 hours. Day 1 afternoon: The Museo Nazionale della Siritide (Piazza Vittorio Veneto, Matera, €5 — the most important Basilicatan archaeological collection, with the specific Lucanian red-figure pottery and the Magna Graecia grave goods from the Siris and Heraklea sites on the Ionian coast). Day 2: The Matera underground (Matera Sotterranea — the hydraulic system cut into the tufa rock below the sassi, in use from the Neolithic period and documented in increasing complexity through the Roman, medieval, and modern periods; guided tour €12, departures from Piazza Vittorio Veneto).
Aliano (population 900, 60km southwest of Matera — accessible by car only) is the village where Carlo Levi was confined by the Fascist government in 1935–1936 and where he wrote Christ Stopped at Eboli (published 1945 — the most important Italian literary document of southern poverty, the book that made Basilicata visible to the Italian north and that generated the policy debate that led to the postwar land reform). The Carlo Levi Museum in Aliano (Via Mazzini, €3, Tuesday–Sunday) occupies the house where he was confined; the permanent exhibition documents the specific local families he painted and wrote about, their descendants still identifiable in the village. The Aliano landscape — the eroded clay badlands (the calanchi — the white clay erosion formations similar to the Val d'Orcia biancane but on a larger and more dramatic scale) surrounding the village — is the landscape of Christ Stopped at Eboli. Carlo Levi is buried in Aliano, at his explicit request.
Basilicata 5-day circuit: Day 1–2 Matera (sassi circuit, rupestri churches, Matera underground); Day 3 Aliano and the calanchi badlands (Carlo Levi Museum, the Cripta del Peccato Originale 9km from Matera); Day 4 Maratea (the most dramatically situated town on the Tyrrhenian coast, the Cristo Redentore statue visible from the sea, the Maratea coves accessible by boat from the marina); Day 5 Metaponto (the Ionian coast Magna Graecia site — the Tavole Palatine Greek temple of Pythagoras' city, the Siris valley archaeological sites). Base: Matera for days 1–3 (cave hotel in the sassi from €80/night for a cave room); Maratea for days 4–5 (Tyrrhenian cliff hotel from €90/night). Car essential throughout (public transport is minimal in Basilicata; the regional bus network connects the major towns but not the archaeological sites or the Cripta del Peccato Originale).
Matera is the capital of Matera province, Basilicata, southern Italy — a city of 60,000 people whose historic centre is the sassi (the cave dwellings carved into two ravines, continuously inhabited for 9,000 years). UNESCO World Heritage since 1993. European Capital of Culture 2019. The sassi were designated "Italy's shame" by the Italian government in 1950 (the families living in the cave dwellings were among the poorest urban populations in post-war Europe); the government forcibly relocated the 15,000 sassi residents to new public housing in the 1952–1963 period. The empty sassi were progressively restored from the 1980s onward and are now the city's primary tourist accommodation zone (cave hotels and restaurants). The specific Matera paradox: the poverty that made the sassi visible as a "problem" also preserved them from the modernisation that destroyed comparable cave settlements elsewhere in southern Italy. The "shame" became the treasure.
Maratea (population 5,100 — a coastal cliff town on the Tyrrhenian coast at the southwestern tip of Basilicata, the only section of Basilicata's coastline that faces the Tyrrhenian rather than the Ionian) is one of the most dramatically situated towns in southern Italy — a medieval borgo on the cliff above the sea, with the Cristo Redentore (a 22m-high Christ statue on the summit of Monte San Biagio above the town, larger than the Rio de Janeiro Cristo but entirely unknown internationally — visible from the sea and from the coast road for 50km). The Maratea coves: the Tyrrhenian coast below Maratea has the clearest water in Basilicata — a series of small coves accessible by boat from the Maratea porto, the most significant being the Grotta di Cala Jannita (accessible by boat only, the cave opening at sea level, snorkelling-accessible with mask and fins). Related: Southern Italy guide.
Cripta del Peccato Originale advance booking, Matera cave hotel recommendations, Aliano Carlo Levi Museum hours, and the Maratea cove boat service from the porto.
La Redazione di TourLeaderPro.comThe presepe (nativity scene — from the Latin praesepium, the manger) was invented in its recognisable form by St. Francis of Assisi in 1223 (in Greccio, Rieti province, Lazio — the first live nativity, documented by Thomas of Celano in the Vita Prima Sancti Francisci). The sculptural nativity figure tradition (the terracotta pastori — the shepherds and the Three Kings in sculpted figures) was developed to its highest level in 18th-century Naples, where the presepe became a competitive art form, a display of technical virtuosity, and a vehicle for social commentary.
The specific Neapolitan contribution: the 18th-century Neapolitan presepe figures are the most technically accomplished small-scale sculptures of the Rococo period — glass eyes, wood armatures covered in sculpted terracotta faces and hands, silk and brocade clothing made to 1/6 scale. The figures represent not only the Nativity participants but the entire Neapolitan social world of the period: vendors, tavern keepers, musicians, aristocrats, and the urban poor. The San Gregorio Armeno (the Christmas alley — the street in the Naples historic centre that houses the presepe artisan workshops year-round, not just at Christmas, though December is the most intense production period) is the most specifically Neapolitan craft destination in the city: the workshops open to the street, the figures visible in production (the sculpted terracotta drying in the sun outside the workshop door), the prices ranging from €5 for a mass-produced plastic figure to €3,000+ for a hand-sculpted master piece. The national presepe collection: the Museo di San Martino (Naples) has the most important collection of 18th-century Neapolitan presepe figures, including the Cuciniello presepe (1879 — the largest and most elaborate assembled Neapolitan nativity, with 200 principal figures and 400 supplementary figures, the most complex constructed presepe in Italy).
San Gregorio Armeno (the Christmas alley — the most famous presepe artisan street in Italy) is in the historic centre of Naples: Via San Gregorio Armeno, running between Spaccanapoli (Via San Biagio dei Librai) and Via dei Tribunali — a 2-minute walk from the Naples Duomo and 5 minutes from the Piazza del Gesù Nuovo. Open year-round (the workshops are permanently active), with the most intense production and visitor traffic in November–December. The artisan workshops with the finest hand-sculpted figures: Gambardella (Via San Gregorio Armeno 41 — the most technically accomplished current artisan), Marco Ferrigno (Via San Gregorio Armeno 8 — the most internationally collected, known for the social commentary figures representing contemporary public figures), and the Mollo workshop (Via San Biagio dei Librai — the most historically continuous). Entry is free to the street; purchases from €5 (small terracotta figure) to €3,000+ (full hand-sculpted set). Related: Naples guide.
Italy has been more consistently and more precisely described by non-Italian writers than almost any other country — the Grand Tour tradition produced 300 years of foreign literary engagement with the Italian landscape and cities:
Goethe in Italy (1786–1788): Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Italian Journey (Italienische Reise, 1816) is the most influential single travel document in Italian literary history — the book that codified the Grand Tour experience and established Rome, Naples, and Sicily as the canonical Italian circuit. Goethe visited Italy at 37 (September 1786 – April 1788), partly to escape the Weimar court and partly because he needed to see the classical antiquity that German education taught in the abstract. The specific Goethe locations: Torbole on Lake Garda (September 1786, where he stopped in the first days of the Italian journey and described the lake in the finest German prose Lake Garda has ever received); the Orto Botanico di Padova (November 1786 — where he saw the Goethe palm and developed his theory of the Urpflanze — the archetypal plant); Rome (October 1786 to February 1787, and April–June 1787, the most productive period); and Sicily (March–April 1787). Henry James in Italy: Henry James spent portions of nearly every year between 1869 and 1905 in Italy; his Italian Hours (1909) is the most precise literary description of the late 19th-century Italian experience. His Venice chapters (written from the rooms he rented above the Grand Canal) are the finest English-language description of Venice available. The specific James locations: the Palazzo Barbaro (the Venetian palazzo belonging to the Curtis family where James stayed and wrote, now a private residence); the Villa Medici Rome (the scene of Roderick Hudson); and the Castel Gandolfo area (the setting of the short stories). D.H. Lawrence in Italy (1912–1913): Lawrence's Twilight in Italy (1916) and Sea and Sardinia (1921) are the most physically engaged British literary descriptions of Italian landscape — Lawrence walked the old pilgrim routes of Lake Garda and the mountain paths of Sardinia, describing the physical sensation of Italian geography with a sensory specificity that no other British writer of the period attempted.
Writers most associated with specific Italian locations: Goethe (Italian Journey 1816 — Rome, Naples, Sicily, Lake Garda; Orto Botanico Padova, the Goethe Palm); Henry James (Italian Hours 1909 — Venice, Rome, Tuscany; the most precise English-language Italian literary description); D.H. Lawrence (Twilight in Italy 1916, Sea and Sardinia 1921 — Lake Garda villages, Sardinia, the most physically engaged British Italian writing); E.M. Forster (A Room With a View 1908, Where Angels Fear to Tread 1905 — Florence; the Piazza Signoria described in the scene where Lucy Honeychurch witnesses a stabbing is the most specific literary Florence); and Carlo Levi (Christ Stopped at Eboli 1945 — Aliano, Basilicata; the most important Italian literary document of southern poverty, described in the Basilicata guide).
The Italian coastline has approximately 339 surviving coastal watchtowers (torri costiere — the 16th-century stone defensive towers built by the viceregal Spanish administration and the coastal municipalities to warn against Ottoman and Barbary pirate raids): the most concentrated visual element of the southern Italian shoreline, appearing every 3–7km on the Tyrrhenian and Ionian coasts from Lazio to Sicily to Calabria to Puglia. Understanding them transforms the coastal landscape from scenic backdrop to historical document:
The specific historical context: the 15th–16th century Ottoman expansion into the western Mediterranean and the parallel Barbary pirate activity from the North African coast (the Corsairs of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli — operating under varying degrees of Ottoman authorization — raided the Italian coast regularly from the 1480s to the 1830s, taking captives for ransom and for enslavement). The most devastating single raid: the 1544 sack of Ischia and the 1558 sack of Sorrentine peninsula villages by the Barbary admiral Dragut, who took approximately 4,000 slaves in a single coastal campaign. The Spanish viceregal response: the construction of a coordinated coastal watchtower network (the torri di vedetta, the lookout towers) between 1563 and 1620 — each tower positioned within sight of the next (typically 3–7km), allowing a visual warning system from one end of the coast to the other. The towers are typically 15–20m high, circular or square cross-section, with the upper floor as the lookout platform and a fire signal apparatus. They were manned by paid coastal guards (the torrieri) who were required to maintain continuous watch and light a beacon immediately on sighting a suspicious sail. The most accessible towers: Torre dell'Orologio (Positano — directly visible from the Spiaggia Grande), Torre Saracena (Chia, Sardinia — described in the best beaches Sardinia south guide), Torre di San Costantino (Capo Vaticano, Calabria), and Torre di Punta Licosa (Cilento coast, south of Paestum — the most isolated and most photogenic tower on the Campania coast, accessible on foot by a 30-minute trail from the Punta Licosa car park).
The coastal watchtowers (torri costiere or torri di vedetta) of southern Italy are 16th-century stone defensive towers built by the Spanish viceregal administration (1563–1620) to warn against Ottoman and Barbary pirate raids. Approximately 339 survive in various states of preservation along the Italian coastline from Lazio to Sicily. The most accessible: Torre di Punta Licosa (Cilento, Campania — 30-minute trail from the Punta Licosa car park on the SS267, free access); Torre Saracena at Chia (Sardinia, visible from the Chia beach, 15-minute walk from the beach); Torre di Conca (Conca dei Marini, Amalfi Coast — the tower directly visible from the Grotta dello Smeraldo approach); and Torre Normanna at Maiori (Amalfi Coast east section, the most visible tower from the coastal road, part of the pre-Spanish Norman defensive system). The towers are typically free to approach; entry to the interior is possible at a few that have been restored for visitor access. The Cilento National Park has the highest concentration of accessible coastal towers in mainland Italy (6 on the 100km coastline).