Maratea
Clifftop Town On The Tyrrhenian Coast Of Basilicata, With The Twenty One Metre Christ The Redeemer Statue On Monte San Biagio Above It · Maratea, Basilicata
Basilicata has about thirty kilometres of Tyrrhenian coast squeezed between Campania and Calabria, and almost all of it is Maratea: a mountain that drops straight into the sea, with a medieval town wrapped round its flank three hundred metres up, a small port below it, and something like forty coves and beaches strung along the rock in either direction, most of them reached down a track or by boat. On the summit above the town stands a Christ the Redeemer in white marble with his arms out, twenty-one metres tall, which is the thing visible from the whole coast and the reason the place is recognised at all. The old town is genuinely lived in, with more churches than a village of this size can possibly need and a single small square that fills in the evening. It gets a fraction of the Amalfi Coast's visitors for a coastline of much the same kind, which is the whole argument for coming. Hire a boat and half the coves have no road to them at all.
Piazza Buraglia, Maratea, Basilicata, 85046, Italy
NO OPENING TIME HERE WAS CHECKED. The structure: the old town, Piazza Buraglia, the summit and the beaches are public and never close. The basilica of San Biagio beside the statue opens daily with a midday interval and shorter winter hours. Boat trips along the coast are seasonal, running roughly Easter to October and cancelled in swell. MUCH OF THE TOWN'S TRADE CLOSES FROM ABOUT NOVEMBER TO MARCH, hotels and restaurants together. Confirm the season before booking anything out of summer.