A love letter to... BASILICATA
This place isn’t mine but I feel like I belong to it. A pale-pink house with its back to bare-ridged mountains and its face turned towards the sea. Green lizards lazing on warm rocks, bougainvillea rioting over a pergola, a shingle beach at the end of the garden.
It took me a while to fall in love with Basilicata. At first it was only the little pink house that drew me back thanks to the cousin who has kindly let me have it whenever I asked. But year after year I kept returning until eventually there was nowhere else I would rather be.
Basilicata lies in the south of Italy, the instep between the toe and the heel of this boot-shaped country. It doesn’t have the showy appeal of other better-known regions; not the swagger of Naples, the riches of Florence or Rome, the romance of Venice. This is a land touched by poverty. It is a place of scarred beauty.
My corner of Basilicata is the Costa di Maratea, a short stretch of rocky coastline that nudges Calabria at its southern end. Around the coast there is a road made of hairpin bends with dizzying views across the Tyrrhenian Sea. A road that leads down to a small harbour with a cluster of seafood restaurants, with fishing boats moored alongside sleek yachts and old men sitting beneath trees, playing card games on summer evenings. A road that veers upwards to Maratea itself, a hilltop town of steep, narrow lanes and 44 churches, some dating back to the 15th century.
High above, on the peak of Monte San Biagio, is a giant statue of Christ the Redeemer, 21 dramatic metres of reinforced concrete and marble, standing with its arms stretched wide. Illuminated at night this tall, white figure seems to hover over the small town.
Admittedly there isn’t a lot to do in this part of Basilicata. Perhaps a kayak tour through the sea caves or a visit to the Grotta delle Meraviglie, a cavern beneath the coast road that is filled with limestone columns and stalactites. There isn’t much in the way of shopping either, a few artisan linens and bright ceramics to buy.
Mostly in Basilicata we try to live like locals.
Drink a coffee in the piazza, take a stroll for a gelato, buy wild asparagus and baby artichokes from trucks at the roadside, cook a bit, eat a lot.
The food here hasn’t strayed too far from tradition. There is lots of Lucanica pork sausage, waxy caciocavallo cheese, meat from the large-horned Podolica cattle that graze the mountains with bells around their necks, the smoky sweetness of dried, crushed Senise peppers scattered over almost anything, from seafood to pasta dishes. All to be enjoyed with the local wine, Aglianico del Vulure, a peppery earthy red and then chased with a glass of the digestion-enhancing herbal liquor Amaro Lucano.
My life has been punctuated by visits to Basilicata. I celebrated my 40th birthday here and my 20th wedding anniversary. Years ago it felt as if no one else had discovered this stretch of southern Italy, now it’s not as rare to hear other foreign voices.
Part of the reason for that is the town of Matera, famous for its sassi, the cave homes that were once squalid, cramped places and have now been transformed into atmospheric hotels – my pick is Sextantio Le Grotte Della Civita where you can dine by candlelight in a deconsecrated rock church. Matera is an experience like no other, to be there feels like walking through history. But with scenes from the latest Bond film shot in its historic centre, it is only going to get more populated and fabulous. It already has Basilicata’s only current Michelin-starred restaurant, Vitantonio Lombardo.
The Costa di Maratea is almost three hours’ drive away from all of that action and here life moves slowly and quietly, nothing seems to change much. I was young and living in England the first time I visited. Now I’m middle-aged and based on the other side of the world. But I will always find reasons to return to this place that never tried too hard to win my heart but won it anyway.