Basilicata

Lying on the instep of the Italian ‘boot’, with hot, windswept, dry summers, Basilicata is one of the most unsophisticated areas of Italy, and its food reflects this. Peasants still keep pigs and nothing is wasted of the animal, not even its squeak they say! Pork products are prized, especially lucanica sausage, and hot dried chilli flavours most dishes. Wheat and olive trees are cultivated to make bread and pasta, and the oil that is so important in local cooking.

Basilicata is bordered by two seas: a narrow strip of the Tyrrhenian Sea to the west, at the Golfo di Policastro; to the south-east there is a larger stretch of coastline around the Golfo di Taranto, on the Ionian Sea. In between lie the southern peaks of the great Italian mountain range, here the Appennino Lucano, and some flatter stretches of land punctuated by a number of rivers flowing down towards the Ionian Sea. Basilicata is bordered to the north by Campania, and to the northeast by Puglia, to which region it actually belonged at one time. The old name of the region, Lucania from lupus (wolf), reminds us that this was once Roman territory; the more modem name comes from the Greek for ‘royal’. There are two provinces only, Potenza and Matera.