A region you understand by driving

Basilicata is the least densely populated region in southern Italy, and you can see it: empty roads, villages hanging off ridges, long stretches where you meet nothing at all. That is not a flaw to be excused, it is the reason to come. Anyone arriving in search of a row of beach clubs and a seafront lit up until dawn has picked the wrong region; anyone looking for the opposite has picked exactly right.

Three regions inside one

The first is the Ionian coast: low, sandy, with pine woods behind the dunes and the remains of Magna Graecia standing in the middle of the fields. It is the widest band of flat land Basilicata has, and it is no accident that intensive agriculture concentrated here, the citrus groves and peach orchards of the Metaponto plain. Almost all the region's open-air accommodation is in that strip.

The second is the Apennine interior, which begins immediately behind and never really ends: it rises to the two thousand two hundred metres of the Pollino, takes in the sandstone spires of the Lucanian Dolomites and the extinct cone of the Vulture, and spreads out the calanchi in between, grey clays that crumble into ridges. This is the part of the region where distances are measured in hours rather than kilometres.

The third is the Tyrrhenian side, which is only Maratea: a slot of high, vertical coast wedged between Campania and Calabria. Barely thirty kilometres, and a landscape that resembles nothing else in Basilicata.

And then there is Matera

Matera stands apart, and not only because it is the best-known thing in the region. It is the only Italian city where people went on living inside the rock until the middle of the twentieth century, and the fact that it is now a mass destination takes nothing away from the shock of the first time you look out over the Gravina. The Sassi have been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1993; in 2019 the city was European Capital of Culture.

The coast to sleep, the interior for the days.

The rule of thumb for anyone travelling by motorhome

How to organise it

For anyone travelling with a tent or a motorhome the rule of thumb is simple, and it holds almost always: base yourself on the Ionian coast and make trips inland. From a campsite between Metaponto and Nova Siri you reach Matera in an hour, the calanchi in three quarters of an hour, the Pollino in a little under two. The reverse, sleeping in the mountains and driving down to the sea, works far less well: open-air sites inland are few and the roads are long.

The other thing to allow for is the season. In summer the Ionian coast is hot and breezy, while the interior above a thousand metres stays cool even in July, and you feel the difference within half an hour of climbing. Out of season many sites close: from mid-September it is worth ringing ahead rather than turning up.