Castelmezzano

Castelmezzano's origins are placed in the 6th or 5th century BC, when Greek settlers entered the Basento valley and founded a town called Maudoro, "world of gold". In the 10th century Saracen raids forced the people to move; legend says a shepherd named Paolino found the new site among steep rocks, from whose peaks invaders could be driven off by rolling boulders down on them.

After the Lombards, the Normans settled here between the 11th and 13th centuries and built a castle, Castrum Medianum, the "castle in the middle", from which the village takes its name; it stood between the castles of Pietrapertosa and its neighbours. The Norman period brought peace and growth, but under the Angevins the village declined, and in the 14th century it was placed first under the diocese of Potenza and then of Acerenza. Under the Aragonese it passed from lord to lord with little change, until the De Leonardis family, who held it from 1580 to 1686, brought some development; it then passed by marriage to the De Lerma, who kept it until feudalism ended in 1805.

In the 19th century the rocks and thick woods made Castelmezzano a refuge for brigands. The earthquake of 1857 damaged the mother church, and on 14 August 1860 local liberals raised the tricolour over the Annunziata chapel for Garibaldi's arrival. Late in the century mass emigration took many families overseas, and between 1961 and 2021 the population fell by more than 60 per cent.

The village's year is marked by religious feasts. On Ascension Sunday it celebrates the Madonna dell'Ascensione, a 14th-century wooden statue in the Santo Sepolcro chapel: legend says two fishermen found it on the shore and it asked to be taken to Castelmezzano. Palm Sunday begins at the chapel of San Marco, a statue of the Madonna is carried in procession on 2 July, and on the night of 15 August pilgrims set out on foot for Tolve in devotion to Saint Roch.

The most striking feast is the Festa del maggio, or "wedding of the trees", held in September during the feast of Saint Anthony and similar to the Maggio of Accettura. A long turkey oak trunk, felled with the woodcutters' traditional tools, is drawn into the village by pairs of oxen, "married" to a holly top carried in by young men, raised upright and then climbed.

Castelmezzano is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia, received the Touring Club Italiano's orange flag in 2020, and has been praised by Budget Travel and The Telegraph. It appears in the film Un paese quasi perfetto, a television series and advertisements for the Tokyo Olympics and Ducati. The village has its own dialect.

About 685 people live in Castelmezzano, on a slope at about 750 metres in the central-eastern part of the province of Potenza. Its territory, with those of Pietrapertosa, Accettura, Calciano and Oliveto Lucano, makes up the Dolomiti Lucane park area, close to the Gallipoli Cognato forest; Pietrapertosa is about 10 km away by road.

Like many villages of inland Basilicata, Castelmezzano has been shaped by emigration. Families left for the Americas from the late 19th century, and emigrants in the United States paid for the marble altars of the mother church in the early 20th century. The population has fallen by more than 60 per cent since 1961.

Tourism has given the village a new role since the Volo dell'Angelo opened in 2007. In the season visitors arrive to fly across the valley, walk the Seven Stones Path and see the village among the peaks; outside it, life returns to the rhythm of a small mountain community, with its church, its squares and its feasts.

Castelmezzano eats the mountain food of Basilicata, a cuisine based mainly on pork and sheep meat, legumes, cereals and vegetables, seasoned with hot peppers, powdered peppers and horseradish, which the region calls "poor man's truffle". Wild boar, mutton and lamb are popular, and lucanica and soppressata are the famous dry sausages; the Roman writer Varro traced the lucanica sausage to ancient Lucania.

Peperone crusco, a dried sweet pepper known as "the red gold of Basilicata", is eaten as a snack and in pasta con i peperoni cruschi, with dried crunchy peppers and breadcrumbs. Lagane e ceci, the "brigand's dish", is pasta with chickpeas and peeled tomatoes; rafanata is an omelette with horseradish; and ciaudedda is a stew of artichokes, potatoes, broad beans and pancetta. Acquasale is built on stale bread.

Hand-made pasta shapes of the region include strascinati, cavatelli and ferretti. Regional cheeses include canestrato di Moliterno and pecorino di Filiano, and the best-known wine is Aglianico del Vulture. The village's few restaurants serve this cooking to visitors in the zip-line season.