Rotondella

Rotondella occupies a conical hilltop in southeastern Basilicata, its position giving rise to the local name for the view, a balcony over the plain below. The 2,436-resident borgo is a tight ring of streets coiling concentrically around the summit, climbing toward a small Castello, now municipal property, at the very top. The parish church sits on the central piazza partway along that climb, a fixed point in an otherwise spiraling street plan.

The town works as a hinge between two very different landscapes. To the west, 45 km off, lies the Pollino massif, Italy's largest national park, home to the Loricato pine that serves as its symbol. To the east and north, the Metapontino plain runs down to the coast, where Policoro and Metaponto hold the temple sites and museums of the Greek settlements that once occupied this stretch of the Ionian. Rotondella sits above both, close enough to serve as a base for either.

The economy below the hill is built on the terraced groves that ring it, the source of the town's oil and its designation as a Città dell'Olio. The food follows the same Lucanian pattern found across the region: peperoni cruschi, pasta with cruschi and breadcrumbs, lagane e ceci, capocollo di Martina Franca and Lucanica sausage, with Aglianico from the Vulture zone 90 km north. Like most small Lucanian borghi, depopulation has thinned the town, from 4,500 residents in 1951 to 2,400 today, a slow contraction that has left the medieval ring largely intact even as it empties.