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Badlands

A substantial part of the province of Matera is characterized by the presence of extensive erosive phenomena: the badlands. These are slopes sometimes completely devoid of vegetation that take very varied forms depending on the erosive phase.
My passion for the Badlands, beyond the love for my land, began some time ago listening to a phrase on the radio that instantly impressed me: "feeling the presence in the absence". A Milanese poet said this about his land: the Po plain. I was 20 years old and for some time already wandered far and wide the lands of Southern Italy walking through the countryside and the woods. A few years later I chose the study of Badlands for my Bachelor’s thesis in Agricultural Sciences. I felt that presence too, and this same mystical feeling, I felt during my American Ph.D. while studying the desert soils of Nevada.
The presence in the absence. The fogs that do not make you see the landscape as in the case of the Milanese poet there are only during the cold and humid winter days. Instead here is the apparent absence of vegetation, the glow of clay that can sometimes blind, the life that seems not to be there and instead there is...
The flocks of sheep and goats leave traces of their passage along the badlands slopes, and the shepherds sometimes set fire to the bushes to prevent them from taking back possession of the places. And so an almost desert landscape presents itself to the eyes of the traveller. And to make the landscape even more dramatic there are the ghost town of Craco, the ruins of the castle of Uggiano, the solitary Tempa Petrolla, the magic handed down by Carlo Levi on the charming village of Aliano... A landscape that penetrates deeply into the soul. An unforgettable excursion!

Destinations

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Aliano

The hilly landscape that surrounds Aliano is so suggestive that it is uneasy to go away without feeling a strong nostalgia. The "Genius loci" pervades the visitor and magically attracts him towards the arid expanses of the desert in search of something moving, a noise or a remote echo. Only the attentive eyes of the black kite gliding over the gorges and clay hideouts break the badlands stillness and invite the gaze to space out distant horizons and the white houses clinging on the ravine crests.
Levi “… The house where finally a few days later ... I went to live was, it can be said, the only civilian house in town... It was made up by three rooms, one in a row to the other. From the street, a side alley on the right of the main street, it was the kitchen, from the kitchen to the second bedroom, with five windows, which was my living room and my painting studio ".
From Levi's writings an empty, uninhabited house, as it is nowadays, inhospitable, almost hostile as he left it after his departure, gradually come back to life. The restoration of the house intends to make it accessible and allow a discreet and delicate intrusion but not modifying or offending what Levi observed, studied and commented on. A house somehow trivial, but with the magic that only places that have entered a great novel are enough lucky to convey.

Craco

'Christ never arrived here, nor did time arrive, neither the individual soul, nor hope, nor the link between causes and effects, reason and history', wrote Carlo Levi about this region which at that time was called Lucania.
Today, as then, Basilicata has its roots and its history between mountains and sea, between barren panoramas and forgotten peasant worlds. In a ghostly landscape consisting of badlands, among structures and buildings in ruins, on a slashed and eroded land, there is what is left of Craco, the ghost town in the province of Matera,391 meters above sea level. The village survived for a thousand years on a rock spur overlooking the valley of Salandrella river, ending up evacuated in 1963, when a landslide, caused by the malfunction of the water system, affected the inhabited center. Since then Craco has stood still over time, definitively fixing that present life until the moment, it stopped being inhabited. It gives the impression of a sculpture of medieval origins surrounded by the "Calanchi".

Uggiano

On a clearing of just over one hectare, at the top of a hill with slopes that descend sharply towards the Salandrella valley and the Lavannara canal, the surviving sections of the ruined city wall stand out among the brushwood, in a state of precarious balance and the remains of the square tower which until thirty years ago was framed by an Angevin arch. Today the atmosphere of abandonment, underlined by bushes and thistles that dot the clays of the badlands, takes on an emblematic meaning here. The castle of Uggiano is just one of the many ruins among which we are used to wander in a region of ancient population, where the ruins of Greek and Roman antiquity juxtapose with prehistoric sites and medieval works of fortification justifying the strategic role of Basilicata, give way to the settlements of the following centuries.

Montalbano Jonico

The historical center (Terra vecchia) of Montalbano - a natural point of arrival or departure for excursions or walks into the Reserve - maintains an interesting Roman layout, well-preserved medieval and seventeenth-century walls, several historic buildings and churches. From its belvedere it overlooks the metapontine plain and it is possible to take a glimpse of  historical sites from the Hellenistic and Roman period, such as Heraclea and Anglona. The most inaccessible area of the gullies where Montalbano was built, is quite spectacular as well. A visit to the Reserve and the adjacent "Terra Vecchia" of Montalbano, therefore, offers unique, varied and highly suggestive experiences.

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