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BASILICATA & CALABRIA
Calabrian mountains offer a great beauty. It is mountainous with large green reserves. Churches, monasteries, castles, ancient palaces, traditions, art and folklore, languages and dialect differ within the region. Adventure lovers have got a wide range of options skiing, hiking or extreme sports. Castles and watch towers are characteristic sights along the Tyrrhenian coast. Pythagoras founded his school at Crotone. The most prestigious gymnasiums of the Olympic athletes of the time were at Sibari and it was here that Strabo dictated the example that historians were to follow: "seventy days were enough to destroy the rich and famous town. In 572 B.C. the people of Croton defeated those of Sibari". In the early 1980s a famous archaeological find became the symbol of Calabria: the Riace Bronzes. They are the two stupendous Greek statues dredged from the sea and exhibited, from the early 1980s, in the Museo Nazionale della Magna Grecia in Reggio Calabria, one of the most important archaeological museums of all the Italian Peninsula. One of the two bronze statues is attributed to Fidia, the master Greek sculptor of the Vth century and famous for the relief of the Parthenon. Since their exposure at the Museo Nazionale hundreds of thousands of visitors arrived in Calabria to discover the marvellous archaeological and historical patrimony of this region.
Basilicata is a tiny southern region, occupied for the most part by mountains that in places reached by two seas: the Tyrrhenian Sea for a short section of coast line, and the Ionian Sea. It is one of the poorest regions in Italy but it possesses a piece of prehistory in the modern world: "The Sassi". They are located at Matera, the second main city of Basilicata, and UNESCO, the UN organization that deals with education, science and culture, has proclaimed it to be the "heritage of humanity". The "caves of Matera" are one of the most peculiar, ancient and extraordinary human settlements in the world, which have drawn the attention of scholars and artists from all over the world (the Italian writer Carlo Levi spoke of them in his famous book "Christ stopped at Eboli"). In the "caves", the houses have been dug out of the tufa rock and the walls constructed with the excavated material.
Inhabited until recently, the "caves" are now empty and have become the object of projects of cultural and tourist revaluation and restoration. A visit to the "caves of Matera" is a truly unique experience. But it is not the only reason to come to this small, secluded, and beautiful region boarded by two seas: the Tyrrhenian and the Ionian. In Basilicata there are Greek ruins (Metaponto), medieval churches and castles (Melfi, Lagopesole), beautiful beaches (Maratea), and serene countryside.