Alternatives to

Alternatives to Matera: every small town in Basilicata, in one list

30 towns · 1 region · the complete list

Matera went from national shame to Capital of Culture in a generation and now has boutique hotels in the caves. The region around it did not, and it is the emptiest, highest, most dramatic corner of the south: villages on rock towers, a coast with one town on it, a national park bigger than some regions.

This is every Basilicata town in our catalogue, 30 of them, with Matera itself removed. Best-recognised first.

30 towns

Castelmezzano
Province: Potenza · 750 m
1h 28m from Matera by car
A medieval village wedged into sandstone teeth at 750 meters, linked to Pietrapertosa by a 1,452-meter zipline since 2007.
Guardia Perticara
Province: Potenza · 678 m
1h 41m from Matera by car
The stone village at 678 meters above the Sauro valley, rebuilt block by block in Gorgoglione sandstone after the 1980 earthquake.
Maratea
Province: Potenza · 300 m
2h 56m from Matera by car
Basilicata's only commune on the Tyrrhenian, thirty-two kilometers of rocky coast overlooked by a marble Christ raised inland in 1965.
San Fele
Province: Potenza · 872 m
1h 51m from Matera by car
A stone village at 872 meters between two peaks, where a 969 fortress and ten waterfalls along the Bradano still define the place.
Sasso di Castalda
Province: Potenza · 949 m
1h 54m from Matera by car
A 949-meter village in the Lucanian Apennines whose emigrants produced the engineer who launched Apollo 11, now crossed by a 300-meter Tibetan footbridge.
Pietrapertosa
Province: Potenza · 1,088 m
1h 35m from Matera by car
Basilicata's highest commune at 1,088 meters, built into the Lucanian Dolomites with a Saracen rock-cut fortress and a 1,400-meter zipline to Castelmezzano.
Rivello
Province: Potenza · 479 m
2h 39m from Matera by car
A 479-meter ridge above the Noce valley where Lombards and Byzantines lived side by side, holding Latin and Greek rites until the seventeenth century.
Aliano
Province: Matera · 555 m
1h 37m from Matera by car
The clay-hill village at 555 meters above the Agri valley where Carlo Levi served his 1935 exile and is buried in the cemetery.
Valsinni
Province: Matera · 250 m
1h 34m from Matera by car
A 1,344-resident Lucanian borgo on a hilltop above the Sinni river, where a 16th-century Renaissance poet was murdered by her brothers in 1545, marked today by a Touring Club Bandiera Arancione and a place inside the Pollino park.
Acerenza
Province: Potenza · 833 m
1h 15m from Matera by car
A walled ridge town at 833 meters in the north Lucanian hills, archbishopric since 1068 under a Romanesque cathedral begun in 1080.

The rest of the 30

11.Miglionico35m from Matera by car · MATERA
12.Venosa1h 10m from Matera by car · POTENZA
13.Irsina40m from Matera by car · MATERA
14.Pisticci1h 2m from Matera by car · MATERA
15.Latronico2h 13m from Matera by car · POTENZA
16.Accettura1h 31m from Matera by car · MATERA
17.Policoro1h 11m from Matera by car · MATERA
18.Rotonda2h 47m from Matera by car · POTENZA

Castelmezzano

Guardia Perticara

Maratea

San Fele

Sasso di Castalda

Pietrapertosa

Rivello

Aliano

Valsinni

Acerenza

The rest of the 30

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