Riserva Naturale
Riserva Naturale in Basilicata
8 towns
Basilicata has 8 Riserva Naturale communes in our index. They are in the Matera and Potenza provinces.
The three most recognized in our catalogue are Matera, Accettura, and Grottole. 5 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
The towns
Matera
Province: Matera · 401 m
Cave dwellings carved into limestone since the Paleolithic, called the shame of Italy in the 1950s and made European Capital of Culture in 2019.
Accettura
Province: Matera · 770 m
A 770-meter village in the Gallipoli Cognato park where, each Pentecost, a Turkey oak is married to a holly tree.
Grottole
Province: Matera · 481 m
A hilltop borgo at 481 meters between the Bradano and Basento, where six hundred empty houses outnumber residents in the centro storico.
Lagonegro
Province: Potenza · 666 m
A 666-meter town founded by Byzantine monks on a defensive promontory, split between a medieval castle village and a modern square below.
Miglionico
Province: Matera · 461 m
A hilltop borgo at 461 meters above the Bradano, the seven-tower castle that gave the 1485 Conspiracy of the Barons its hall.
Policoro
Province: Matera · 25 m
An Ionian-coast town built on the ruins of the Greek polis of Heraclea, with a national museum devoted to the city's finds and a nature reserve running the country's documented sea turtle nesting program.
Bernalda
Province: Matera · 127 m
A 127-meter hill town between the Bradano and Basento, Francis Ford Coppola's ancestral home, holding the Magna Graecia columns of the Tavole Palatine.
Rotondella
Province: Matera · 576 m
A 2,400-resident Lucanian borgo on a 576m hilltop, its medieval streets ringed concentrically around the summit above the Metapontino plain.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns
Muggia
Province: Trieste
The only town on the Istrian peninsula still inside Italy, a small Venetian port on the Gulf of Trieste five kilometers from the Slovenian border.
Petacciato
Province: Campobasso
A hilltop village at 225 meters on the Adriatic, with a Romanesque church in tuff and sandstone and a long sand beach below.
Cortemilia
Province: Cuneo
An Alta Langa town at 247 meters split by the Bormida, capital of the Tonda Gentile di Langa hazelnut.
Torre Annunziata
Province: Napoli
Capital of Italian pasta in the interwar period and home of the Roman Villa di Poppea, on the bay at the foot of Vesuvius.
Sirmione
Province: Brescia
A 4-kilometer peninsula reaching into the southern Garda, its tip closed by a fortified port and a Roman villa.