Pietrapertosa

Climbed laboriously, courageously and almost magically suspended in the absolute void, the ancient and spectacular town of Pietrapertosa rightly boasts the title of the highest municipality (set at 1088 meters above sea level) and without a shadow of a doubt one of the most incredible, dizzying and photographed villages in the entire and impervious Basilicata. The compact residential nucleus is in fact a true, authentic and prodigious urban masterpiece of the medieval era, literally, physically and inseparably fused and held in an eternal embrace with the bare and white sandstone rock of the magnificent peaks of the Small Lucanian Dolomites, and is proudly immersed and protected in the pulsating green and lush heart of the vast Regional Natural Park of Gallipoli Cognato.

Walking through the steep streets of Pietrapertosa is like walking along a silent and daring mountain path suspended between earth and sky. Its intricate, narrow, steep and labyrinthine original Arab neighborhood (not by chance called the Arabata), strategically founded over a millennium ago by the Saracen hordes, is an uninterrupted succession of tortuous alleys made of stone, steep and slippery stairways entirely cut in the stone, tiny sudden openings and dozens of civilian homes that ingeniously exploit and fit perfectly into the dark ravines and shelters natural resources offered by the gigantic, white, frightening limestone cliff that menacingly towers over them. Solemnly dominating the scene and protecting from above this vertiginous, inaccessible Apennine eagle’s nest are the proud and melancholy ruins of the thousand-year-old Norman-Swabian Castle, a once completely impregnable military bastion partially dug into the rock from which, even today, the lucky traveler’s view can finally happily open up and lose himself freely on the boundless, very green and deep valleys below, in a pure panorama and breathtaking.

Yet, despite its ancient and haughty impregnable rocky nature, Pietrapertosa is today a very modern, touristic, dynamic and vital village, famous throughout Italy and Europe for an inimitable, adrenaline-filled thrill attraction: the formidable and very famous “Flight of the Angel”. Thanks to a very sturdy steel cable stretched and suspended in the absolute void of the deep valley, it is in fact possible, for the bravest ones, to launch themselves into free flight attached to a harness until they reach the twin town opposite Castelmezzano at full speed, skimming the sharp Lucanian Dolomite peaks in flight at over one hundred kilometers per hour. Awarded by popular acclaim with the highly coveted and well-deserved national title of one of the “Most beautiful villages in Italy”, the eternal village of Pietrapertosa is the perfect, bold and sublime union between the absolute, imposing and wise millennial silence of the pure naked mountain and the formidable, pure, instinctive and very strong thrill of the pure and uncontaminated air of the south.