Basilicata Events

Basilicata’s calendar is made of village rituals rather than staged festivals, and several are genuinely unusual.

Il Maggio di Accettura, late May

A tall oak is felled in one wood and a holly top in another, dragged to the village by oxen and by hand, joined together and raised upright. It takes days, involves the whole village, and is a fertility rite far older than its Christian framing.

La Madonna della Bruna, Matera, 2 July

A papier-mâché chariot is built over months, paraded, and then deliberately torn apart by the crowd, who take pieces home for luck. The destruction is the point and it is over in minutes.

The rural carnivals, February

The Lucanian carnivals are among the most studied in Italy by anthropologists rather than tourists. At Aliano, masks with enormous noses and horned headdresses are worn through the streets; at Satriano di Lucania the rumita walks covered head to foot in ivy, a man turned into a moving tree; and Tricarico’s parade is made up of cattle, with participants masked as cows and bulls and driven through the village. None of these is staged for visitors and all predate their Christian framing.

Holy Week in the villages

Processions across the region, with the Arbëreshë communities following the Byzantine calendar and rite, which puts their Easter on a different date.

The agricultural year

Peppers are strung to dry from August, chestnuts and mushrooms come in through October in the Pollino, and the olive harvest follows. The sagre attached to each are small and local.

Accommodation in Matera is tight around 2 July and during the summer; the rest of the region is easy in any month.