Alternatives to
Alternatives to Matera: every small town in Basilicata, in one list
30 towns · 1 region · the complete list
92 towns written about, 908 to go. Follow along, free: Subscribe on Substack
Castelmezzano, Basilicata
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-recognized first.
Instead of Matera
Matera · 59,685 residents · Basilicata
- CastelmezzanoPotenza
Mountain town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Matera
- 1 h 28 min by car
- Residents
- 696
- When to go
- May–Oct
- Guardia PerticaraPotenza
Mountain town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Matera
- 1 h 41 min by car
- Residents
- 508
- When to go
- May–Oct
- MarateaPotenza
Coastal town · Borghi più belli d'Italia
- From Matera
- 2 h 56 min by car
- By train
- Reachable
- Residents
- 4,601
- When to go
- May–Sep
- San FelePotenza
Mountain town · Borgo dei Borghi
- From Matera
- 1 h 51 min by car
- Residents
- 2,534
- When to go
- May–Oct
- Sasso di CastaldaPotenza
Mountain town · Bandiera Arancione
- From Matera
- 1 h 54 min by car
- Residents
- 720
- When to go
- May–Oct
The 5 best-recognized of the 30 towns that match. Drive times measured by road from Matera. More of them follow below.
Castelmezzano
Province: Potenza · 750 m
A medieval village wedged into sandstone teeth at 750 meters, linked to Pietrapertosa by a zipline of about 1.4 km since 2007.
Guardia Perticara
Province: Potenza · 678 m
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
Basilicata's only commune on the Tyrrhenian, thirty-two kilometers of rocky coast overlooked by a stone-clad Christ finished in 1965 and turned toward the mountain.
San Fele
Province: Potenza · 872 m
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
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
Basilicata's highest commune at 1,088 meters, built into the Lucanian Dolomites with a Saracen rock-cut fortress and a zipline of about 1.4 km to Castelmezzano.
Rivello
Province: Potenza · 479 m
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
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
A 1,309-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
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
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