Craco

Discover Craco

The cliff drops 400 m (1,312 ft) to the Cavone River valley below, and from the summit the bare mounds of eroded clay — the calanchi, badlands shaped by centuries of rain cutting through unstable soil — stretch in every direction without a tree or a roof to interrupt them.

The Castle Tower still stands at the highest point of the settlement, its stone mass visible for kilometres across the plateau.

No one has lived here permanently since 1980, yet the buildings remain: walls intact enough to frame a doorway, floors collapsed enough to reveal what lies beneath.

Deciding what to see in Craco begins with understanding the scale of the site — a complete medieval and post-medieval urban fabric set at 400 m (1,312 ft) altitude, roughly 40 km (25 mi) inland from the Gulf of Taranto in the province of Matera, Basilicata, Italy.

Visitors to Craco find a walled ghost town included in the World Monuments Fund watch list since 2010, a landscape of eroded calanchi formations, and a documented history of over a thousand years compressed into a single site accessible by guided tour.

History of Craco

The name Craco appears in written records from 1060 AD, when the Archbishop of Tricarico, Arnaldo, referred to the territory as Graculum, a Latin word meaning “little plowed field.” The area’s human presence, however, predates that document by nearly two millennia: tombs found at the site date from the 8th century BC, and around 540 BC Greeks who had settled the coastal town of Metaponto moved inland and occupied this elevated position. The choice of a steep summit was deliberate — the height provided a defensive advantage over the valley floor, and that logic governed the layout of everything built afterward.

From 1154 to 1168, a nobleman named Eberto, likely of Norman origin, established the first feudal control over the town. In 1179, Roberto of Pietrapertosa became its landlord.

Under the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, Craco functioned as a military centre, and the Castle Tower held Lombard prisoners who had fought against the Emperor. A university was founded in the town in 1276, and the population grew steadily — from 450 residents recorded in 1277, to 655 in 1477, to 1,718 in 1532, reaching a peak of 2,590 in 1561.

Four large palazzi — Palazzo Maronna, Palazzo Grossi, Palazzo Carbone, and Palazzo Simonetti — defined the civic fabric of the town by the 15th century. A plague in 1656 killed hundreds and sharply reduced the number of families present. By 1815, the settlement had grown large enough to be divided into two formal districts: Torrevecchia, the uppermost area near the castle, and Quarter della Chiesa Madre, the area surrounding San Nicola’s Church.

The 19th century brought political upheaval followed by slow demographic erosion. In 1799, during the brief Parthenopean Republic, the townspeople overthrew the Bourbon feudal system; the republican movement was suppressed within months, and Craco passed under the Napoleonic occupation before returning to Bourbon rule. On 18 July 1807, brigand bands attacked the town, killing pro-French notables and looting it. After Italian unification, brigand leader Carmine Crocco took Craco in 1861.

Between 1892 and 1922, more than 1,300 residents — known as Crachesi — emigrated to North America, driven by poor agricultural conditions.

Landslides beginning in 1963 forced the evacuation of the remaining population, who relocated to the valley settlement of Craco Peschiera. A flood in 1972 made any return to the historic centre impossible, and the 1980 Irpinia earthquake completed the abandonment. In 2007, descendants of the emigrants formed the Craco Society, a non-profit organisation based in the United States dedicated to preserving the town’s history and culture.

What to see in Craco, Basilicata: top attractions

The Castle Tower

The tower is the tallest surviving structure in the settlement, positioned at the highest point of the Torrevecchia district, which was formally designated the upper quarter of the town by 1815. Its stone walls held Lombard prisoners under Frederick II in the 13th century, giving it a function that went well beyond simple observation. Standing at its base, visitors look directly down the cliff edge to the Cavone River valley, a vertical drop of 400 m (1,312 ft).

The tower is accessible only as part of an organised guided visit, which is the required format for all entries into the abandoned site; access is not permitted independently for safety reasons.

The Calanchi Landscape

The bare, vegetation-less clay mounds surrounding Craco are the result of intensive erosion acting on unstable subsoil over a long period — the same geological instability that provoked the 1963 landslides and made permanent habitation untenable.

Each calanco ridge forms a sharp, layered profile that changes colour between ochre and pale grey depending on the light and season. The landscape extends for several kilometres in each direction from the town, and it reads as a direct explanation of why Craco was built on a cliff rather than on flat ground.

Early spring, when rain sharpens the gully edges and the air is clear, offers the most defined views of the formation patterns from the town’s perimeter.

The Church of San Nicola and the Quarter della Chiesa Madre

San Nicola’s Church gave its name to one of the two official districts established by 1815, which reflects the degree to which religious institutions structured daily life in Craco for centuries — a relationship that traces back to Archbishop Arnaldo’s ownership of the territory in 1060. The building stands in the lower section of the abandoned town, its facade still largely intact while the interior shows significant structural compromise.

The Church’s long association with the town, documented across nine centuries, makes it one of the most historically layered structures on site. Visitors approaching from the Quarter della Chiesa Madre side of the settlement pass the remains of residential buildings that illustrate how domestic and religious architecture were interwoven in the same urban block.

The Film Location Sites

Craco has served as a set for more than ten international film and television productions, a fact that makes several specific spots within the ruins recognisable to cinema audiences.

Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ (2004) used the town’s streets and crumbling facades for sequences set in ancient Jerusalem. Marc Forster’s Quantum of Solace (2008) filmed an action sequence here.

Earlier productions include Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) and Bruce Beresford’s King David (1985). The guided tour route passes through the areas most frequently used as sets, and guides identify specific wall sections or open spaces that appeared on screen.

For visitors familiar with any of these productions, the physical scale of the spaces — narrow lanes, steep stone stairways — is immediately apparent.

The Panoramic Ridge over the Cavone Valley

The ridge that runs steeply to the southwest of the town centre is where the older defensive logic of the site becomes most legible: the drop toward the Cavone River is immediate, and the newer buildings constructed in the lower sections of the settlement are visible below, separated by exposed rock faces. From this vantage point the full extent of the calanchi terrain spreads across the valley in a continuous band. The ridge is approximately 40 km (25 mi) from the Gulf of Taranto coast, and on clear days the coastal plain is visible in the distance.

The best light for photography falls in the late afternoon, when the clay formations cast long lateral shadows that define their structure most clearly.

Local food and typical products of Craco

The cuisine of the area around Craco reflects the agricultural economy that sustained the town through its inhabited centuries — an economy based on wheat cultivation, sheep grazing, and the cultivation of legumes on the steep fields of the Matera province.

The term Graculum, meaning “little plowed field,” in the 1060 document is itself a reference to this agrarian foundation. The mass emigration of more than 1,300 residents to North America between 1892 and 1922 disrupted local food traditions, but the broader culinary culture of the Matera province remained intact and continues in the valley settlements around Craco Peschiera.

The dominant grain-based tradition produces several bread and pasta forms common across the Matera plateau. Pane di Matera, a large durum wheat sourdough loaf with a dense crumb and thick crust, is baked in wood-fired ovens and forms the basis of several dishes. Crapiata is a legume and grain soup traditionally prepared on the first of August in the Matera area, combining chickpeas, broad beans, lentils, wheat berries, and corn in a single pot without added fat; the technique relies on the natural starch from the grains to thicken the broth.

Lagane e ceci — wide, flat pasta ribbons served with chickpeas, garlic, and olive oil — represents one of the oldest documented pasta forms in southern Italian cooking, with no egg in the dough.

The pastoral component of the local economy produced a range of sheep’s milk cheeses.

Pecorino di Filiano holds a Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) and is produced in the Basilicata region using milk from Gentile di Lucania, Leccese, and Moscia sheep; it is aged for a minimum of 180 days for the mature version and develops a hard, granular texture with a slightly pungent finish. Canestrato di Moliterno is another Basilicata PDO cheese, produced from a mix of sheep’s and goat’s milk and aged in the natural caves of Moliterno.

Lamb, particularly slow-roasted or braised with wild herbs including peperone crusco — the dried, sweet red pepper that is a defining ingredient of Basilicata’s cooking — appears regularly in the trattorias of the valley communities near Craco.

The peperone crusco deserves separate attention: these thin-walled sweet peppers are dried whole, then fried briefly in olive oil until they turn crisp, and used as a condiment or garnish across a wide range of dishes. They are produced in the Senise area of Basilicata and carry an IGP (Protected Geographical Indication) designation under the name Peperone di Senise (IGP). Local markets in Matera and the surrounding municipalities stock them in both dried and fried form, and autumn is the primary harvest and drying season, making September and October the most direct time to see them being processed in the area.

Festivals, events and traditions of Craco

The patron saint of Craco is San Vincenzo, a martyr associated with the town.

The historical relationship between the Church and the community of Craco was substantial and continuous from at least 1060, when the Archbishop of Tricarico held the territory, through the formal division of the town into the Quarter della Chiesa Madre district in 1815. Religious observance structured the civic calendar for the entire period of the town’s inhabitation.

Since the abandonment of the site after 1980, formal religious events have transferred to Craco Peschiera, the valley resettlement where the displaced population established its new centre of community life.

The Craco Society, founded in 2007 by descendants of the 1892–1922 emigrants to North America, organises periodic commemorative and cultural events that draw people of Crachesi origin back to the site. These events are not fixed annual festivals but rather organised gatherings tied to the Society’s preservation mission. The site itself has hosted film shoots and music video productions — including the 2020 video for “Paradise” by Italian dance project Meduza featuring Dermot Kennedy — which function as a distinct form of cultural event, bringing temporary international production crews and audiences into contact with the abandoned town.

When to visit Craco, Italy and how to get there

The best time to visit Craco is between April and June, and again in September and October.

Spring keeps the calanchi terrain at its most visually defined, with recent rainfall having sharpened the erosion gullies while the air remains clear enough for long views across the valley. Summer heat at 400 m (1,312 ft) altitude is manageable compared to the coast, but the exposed site offers little shade, and midday visits in July and August are uncomfortable. Autumn brings lower temperatures and the added context of the agricultural season in the surrounding countryside, with peppers drying on farmhouse facades along the approach roads.

Winter visits are possible but guided tour availability may be reduced.

Craco sits about 40 km (25 mi) from the Gulf of Taranto and approximately 35 km (22 mi) southwest of Matera. From Rome, the drive covers roughly 400 km (249 mi) via the A2 motorway southbound toward Salerno, then the SS407 Basentana eastward into the Matera province — a journey of approximately four hours by car. Matera itself makes a practical base for a day trip to Craco, with the drive taking under an hour. The nearest major train station is in Matera, served by Trenitalia connections from Bari and other regional hubs; from the station a car rental or taxi is necessary, as no regular bus service connects Matera to Craco.

The nearest airport with regular domestic and international connections is Bari Karol Wojtyła Airport, approximately 100 km (62 mi) from the site. Entry into the abandoned town is by guided tour only — independent access is not permitted. International visitors should note that English is not widely spoken at smaller local services in this part of Basilicata, and carrying cash in euros is advisable as card payment terminals are not universally available in the area.

Visitors combining Craco with other villages in the Basilicata interior may find it worth including a stop at Cancellara, a hilltop settlement in the province of Potenza that shares the same pattern of defensive upland positioning and a comparable medieval built fabric.

For those approaching from the northern part of the region, Albano di Lucania offers another example of a Basilicata village built on elevated terrain with a layered history extending from the medieval period through to the modern era.