Parco Nazionale
Parco Nazionale in Basilicata
9 towns
Basilicata holds 9 Parco Nazionale sites inside our catalogue. They cluster in the Potenza and Matera provinces.
The three most recognised in our catalogue are Latronico, Lagonegro, and Sasso di Castalda. 6 more towns carry the mark alongside them.
Latronico
Province: Potenza · 888 m
A mountain town at 888 meters on the northern edge of the Pollino, with two prehistoric thermal springs at the Calda hamlet below.
Lagonegro
Province: Potenza · 666 m
A 666-meter Valle del Noce town founded by Byzantine monks, where local legend places the burial of Lisa del Giocondo, Leonardo's Mona Lisa.
Sasso di Castalda
Province: Potenza · 949 m
A 949-meter village in the Lucanian Apennines whose emigrants produced the engineer who launched Apollo 11, now crossed by a 300-meter Tibetan footbridge.
Calvello
Province: Potenza · 730 m
A 730-meter ceramic town at the foot of Monte Venturino, working clay since 1200 when Benedictines from Faenza brought the wheel south.
Rivello
Province: Potenza · 479 m
A 479-meter ridge above the Noce valley where Lombards and Byzantines lived side by side, holding Latin and Greek rites until the seventeenth century.
Rotonda
Province: Potenza · 626 m
The Pollino park's Lucanian gateway — a 3,171-resident borgo at 626m on the Basilicata/Calabria border, headquartered HQ for the Parco Nazionale del Pollino (Italy's largest national park), with the Fagiolo Bianco Poverello + Melanzana Rossa di Rotonda DOP slow-food products, the Borgo Autentico mark, and the Loricato pine forests immediately above town.
Valsinni
Province: Matera · 250 m
Isabella Morra's tragic castle — a 1,344-resident Lucanian borgo on a hilltop above the Sinni river, with the 11th-c Castello Morra where the 16th-c Renaissance poet Isabella Morra was murdered by her brothers in 1545, a Touring Club Bandiera Arancione + Pollino park signal, and the annual Parco Letterario festival reading her poems in the rooms where she wrote them.
Viggiano
Province: Potenza · 975 m
A 975-meter Val d'Agri ridge town, home of the Black Madonna of Lucania and the Italian folk harp, on Europe's largest onshore oil field.
Terranova di Pollino
Province: Potenza · 926 m
At 926 meters on the Lucanian side of the Pollino, the gateway into Italy's largest national park, home of the Sarmento red potato.
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From elsewhere in Italy
Five more towns to discover
Putignano
Province: Bari
Europe's longest-running carnival — Putignano Carnevale has run continuously since 1394, with 631 years of cartapesta papier-mâché floats, a 26,000-resident Murgia town on the Bari–Lecce plateau, and the Grotta del Trullo karst cave inside the centro.
Pistoia
Province: Pistoia
Italy's nursery capital and the medieval Tuscan rival that gave its name to the pistol — a quietly extraordinary centro storico of zebra-striped Romanesque churches, Andrea della Robbia's polychrome frieze on the Ospedale del Ceppo, and Italy's Capital of Culture 2017, all 30 minutes from Florence by train.
Tropea
Province: Vibo Valentia
Cliff town on a tufa headland over the Tyrrhenian Coast of the Gods, with a Norman monastery on a sea rock.
Caldes
Province: Trento
A scattered Val di Sole commune on the Noce, six hamlets gathered around a thirteenth-century tower-house castle that once belonged to the Thun family.
Cantiano
Province: Pesaro e Urbino
A border borgo at 374 meters under Monte Catria on the old Via Flaminia, known for the Good Friday Turba and the sour-cherry visciola harvest.