Bandiera Blu
Bandiera Blu in Basilicata
5 towns
Basilicata holds 5 Bandiera Blu sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Matera and Potenza provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Pisticci, Maratea, and Nova Siri. 2 more towns carry the mark alongside them.

Pisticci
Province: Matera · 364 m
A hill town at 364 meters above the Ionian, rebuilt in three hundred identical white houses after the 1688 landslide killed four hundred.

Maratea
Province: Potenza · 300 m
Basilicata's only commune on the Tyrrhenian, thirty-two kilometers of rocky coast under a twenty-one meter marble Christ raised over Monte San Biagio in 1965.

Nova Siri
Province: Matera · 350 m
A 350-meter Ionian hill town with a Blue Flag beach nine kilometers below, near the site of the ancient Greek colony of Siris.

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.

Policoro
Province: Matera · 25 m
A Ionian-coast town on the Gulf of Taranto built on the ruins of the Greek polis of Heraclea — birthplace of the Tavole di Eraclea bronze inscriptions and home to one of the region's most-visited Bandiera Blu beaches and the National Museum of the Siritide.
Subscribe — free
Get the best guides on hidden Italian towns.
One letter on Sundays. The week’s town, with the photo, the food, the festa. Free, by Peter & Sophia from Pietrasanta.
Substack sends a confirmation link to your inbox. The signup finishes when it’s clicked.
From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover

Pieve di Soligo
Province: Treviso
The market town between the Soligo and Lierza rivers in the Prosecco UNESCO zone, birthplace of the twentieth-century poet Andrea Zanzotto.

Vallefoglia
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A 2014 merger commune at 295 meters in the Foglia valley, born from Colbordolo, birthplace of Raffaello's father, and Sant'Angelo in Lizzola.

Abano Terme
Province: Padova
Europe's oldest thermal town on the Euganean Hills' eastern slope, where 80°C bromo-iodine springs have been drawing bathers since the eighth century BC.

Bosa
Province: Oristano
A colour-washed riverside town on Sardinia's only navigable river, with a Malaspina castle on the hill and the tanneries of Sas Conzas along the Temo.

Castagnole delle Lanze
Province: Asti
An Asti hill town at 298 meters between Langhe and Monferrato, with two Baroque churches and a nineteenth-century astronomical tower.
