BASILICATA NEWS

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new sport in town. Well, not in town exactly, more like the Parco di Gallipoli Cognato and the dolomiti Lucane in Basilicata.
Bouldering, as this free climbing technique is known, is rock climbing over short distances without a rope and it is a very hot indeed in Basilicata, with more and more Italians and foreigners coming to the area to take part. The climbs tend to be shorter so you won’t hurt yourself if you fall too far and can be done on large boulders, artificial rock faces and of course the dolomiti lucane!

The famous sassi dwellings, the churches in the rocks and the museums were the favourite destinations of the many tourists who visited Matera this Easter long weekend. Campers, motorcyclists, foreign visitors (predominantly German) and Italians from the centre and north of the country also decided that the best place to spend their spring break was in this totally unique and unforgettable city.

The province of Matrera has created 100 study grants for courses in tourism, the environment, culture and innovation in England, France, Spain and Ireland. The students will stay up to 13 weeks overseas. The “Ethos” programme, as the new study initiative is named, was launched by the provincial assessor in collaboration with The Culture.net and Centro Servizio.
The grant will cover the costs of language and cultural tuition, living expenses and lodging costs in the host country plus insurance. Assessore for Work and Politics Pasquina Bona said the initiative was very welcome, offering “new opportunities for our young people and the region as a whole.”

The Basilicata city of Matera, famous for its sassi – cave dwellings – has done it again. In the “Rapporto 2008 sulla qualità della vita" – Italiaoggi’s annual report on the quality of life in Italian cities, it has once again been voted the safest city in Italy. In contract Bologna was voted the least safe, the results based on levels of reported crime.
This is excellent news if you are buying one of our masseria properties which are located very close to the country’s safest city!

The world’s most famous and luxurious train service the Orient Express does not stretch as far south as Matera unfortunately, but that doesn’t mean the south of Italy is out of the loop completely.
Two of the eighteen carriages from the Venice – Simplon Orient Express are being meticulously restored at Matera Ferrosud, a mechanical engineering company in Basilicata as part of a long term contract.
As well as restoring carriages at Matera, the company keeps a team of six staff in Venice for maintenance of the luxury carriages, which were built between 1926 and 1931.
As well as the Venice-Simplon Orient Express contract, the company is in talks with London concerning maintenance and restoration of other prestigious classic trains or ‘treni d’epoca’ as they are known in Italian.

You need nerves of steel to take the Volo dell’Angelo, but that’s exactly what 5300 people did between June and September this year, according to statistics released over the weekend. The Volo is in Potenza, Basilicata between Castelmezzano and Pietrapertosa and costa about Euro 30. For this you get to ‘fly’ suspended a from a wire over a thousand metres above the so-called ‘Dolomiti Lucane.’ The figures for the tourist attraction revealed that of the 5300 people ‘about 5000’ were Italians, suggesting that the high wire hasn’t caught on with tourists yet! Of those 5000, the average age was between 26 and 35 years old. If you fancy having a go at the Volo dell’Angelo you’ll have to wait until next year, but you can watch this video to get an idea of what it’s all about.

It’s official. The wonderful bread from Matera has now got Protected Geographical Indication status from the European Union. Eight new products from Italy have been added to the coveted European Quality Food list, making a total of 173 products from the country. This puts Italy at the top of the Quality Food List, followed by France which has 160 labels and Spain with 117. The two designations are PGI and PDO, standing for Protected Designation of Origin. As well as Matera’s bread, the south did well with a chestnut from Roccaside, Campania and an onion from Tropea in Calabria among the eight foods from Italy recognised by the EU

This September Matera is the host city for the prestigious 2008 Women’s International Fiction Festival. The fifth edition of the show promises to be the best yet, with agents, editors and writers from around the globe participating. Held on 25th and 26 September the festival covers a wide variety of genres from thrillers to romance and offers readers a chance to meet and chat with their favourite authors in the beautiful setting of Matera’s sassi. Take a look at the Festival’s website here.

It was a simple message - ‘Saluti’ - on a postcard franked with a 25 lire stamp. Sent from one friend on holiday in Trento, northern Italy to another back in his home town of Matera, Basilicata. What was unusual about this postcard though was the time it took to arrive. It was posted in 1972 and arrived on 4 September 2008 at the home of Michele Pace, a lawyer who works for a company in Matera. Pace was delighted to receive the card and now numbers it among his most treasured possessions. Even more so because he has since lost touch with the friend who sent it. He said he would love to hear from him again, to catch up on what he’s doing and, of course, to say thank you for the postcard posted on a summer’s holiday 36 years ago.

The famous 120-year-old daily paper serving Basilicata and Puglia La Gazetta del Mezzogiorno has been updated using the latest 21st century technology. The paper is now in full colour tabloid format and one edition serves the four Puglia and two Basilicata provinces, instead of six separate editions. Thanks to new printing technology the daily can produce editions with up to 112 pages. The makeover was overseen by the paper’s director Carlo Bollino and managing director Giuseppe De Tomaso and took three months in total.