By 9 p.m., the streets were bursting at the seams. Illuminated by glittering arches of colorful lights, horses dragged a papier-mâché Madonna statue back up to the top of the hill and inside the cathedral, before a sputter of fireworks began again over the far side of the valley, and the crowds began threading their way through the labyrinth of steps and alleyways that make up the city’s Sassi cave districts. Another barrage of fireworks erupted from the canyon, and locals gathered on the terraces to play music and sip prosecco and cheer. As the cheers echoed around the craggy walls of limestone, lit up with flashes of pink and purple light, there was a feeling of having stepped back in time, or perhaps onto the set of a movie—a sense that would recur across my week in the region of Basilicata. It feels like the kind of Italy you can’t quite believe still exists—which explains why it’s swiftly becoming a hotspot for intrepid travelers keen to avoid the country’s more tourist-clogged corners.
If you think of southern Italy as a boot—Puglia the heel, Calabria the toe, and Sicily the misshapen football being kicked into the Mediterranean Sea—then Basilicata, the region that houses Matera, occupies the slightly less glamorous position of its instep. Yet that also means it contains a little bit of everything, from dramatic mountain ranges and lush national parks to charming beach towns and ancient cities. And when I describe Matera as ancient, I mean ancient.
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