Guardia Perticara

Guardia Perticara sits at 678 meters above the valley of the Sauro stream in the south of the Potenza province, a hundred and twenty kilometers from Cosenza. The Saracens destroyed the earlier settlement in the tenth century; the medieval village that grew up afterward was built almost entirely in the local Gorgoglione sandstone, the warm honey-grey stone that gives the place its name as the paese delle case in pietra, the village of stone houses. The 1980 Irpinia earthquake damaged most of the settlement.

The reconstruction that followed was unusual: rather than concrete, the village was rebuilt block by block in the original stone, with the original portals, stairs, arches and wrought-iron balconies preserved or replaced in kind. The result became a textbook case of conservation reconstruction, and the village has been used as a film set repeatedly, including for Francesco Rosi's Cristo si è fermato a Eboli and for Basilicata Coast to Coast. Piazza Europa was one of Rosi's main locations. Guardia Perticara carries Borghi più belli and Bandiera Arancione both.