Discovering the Ruins of Italy’s Ionian Coast

[elleng]

It was my first day back in Metaponto in a decade, and I was anxious. As my train from Rome pulled into the station, after a six-hour descent past Vesuvius, the craggy Lucanian Dolomites, olive groves and pebbly streams, and finally the small hill towns and low, pale mountains (calanchi) of the Basilicata region, I wondered what had changed in this place since my last visit. My family was from this area originally, four generations back, and I had come here twice before to do genealogical research. But it had been a while. . .

For the next five days, I would visit the area’s breathtaking museum collections (in both Metaponto and nearby Policoro), swim in its transparent turquoise waters, lie on its empty, soft, sandy beaches pretending to be like Odysseus, washed up on some lost and distant shore. The same shore the philosopher Pythagoras retired to. The same shore conquered by Saracen pirates and later the Normans. The same shore plagued by malaria for many years, though it has since been eradicated.

Tourists haven’t exactly discovered the Ionian coast yet, as they have Matera, which was chosen as the European Capital of Culture in Italy on the last day of my trip. (Local business owners are hoping the tourists will trickle down to the water’s edge of the region.) But the lack of visitors makes the place all the more appealing, frozen in time and unsullied. And bought for a song.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/08/travel/discovering-the-ruins-of-italys-ionian-coast.html?hpw&rref=travel&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region&region=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

[CTyankee]

1. Those photos remind me of the little hill towns in Italy when I went on the Piero

della Francesca Art Trail a year ago. That, too, was a step into the past.

I'd love to go to this region. What a fabulous history.

[elleng]

2. Thought you'd like it, yank!