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As visually striking as the Amalfi coast a hundred miles to the north, but with far more affordable amenities for the traveller, the slender Costa di Maratea lies between the wind-whipped Gulf of Policastro and the rugged western slope of the Apennine Mountains.

The Maratea region, a twenty-kilometer long finger of the rural province of Basilicata, enjoys a reputation for ends-of-the-earth wildness that dates far back into antiquity. Virgil tells us that it was here that Aeneas’s helmsman Palinurus washed ashore after falling asleep on watch- and here that the local inhabitants promptly butchered the unfortunate stranger. In more recent years, the tall, cave-riddled hills overlooking the Mediterranean have served as hiding places for bandits, mafiosi, and antifascist guerrillas. The odds of being robbed or injured here were solid enough that for many years few outsiders came to the region- which was just fine by the locals, who kept to their vineyards and gardens and worked the fertile sea unnoticed.

With the completion of a modern inland highway, the A3, in the early 1980s, Maratea began to attract visitors, most from the interior of Basilicata and neighboring provinces. Twenty years later, it has become a destination for visitors from farther north in Italy, but it remains well outside the international package-tour orbit.

Extending from the River Noce to the border with Campania, Maratea is a congeries of small towns and ports. The largest, Maratea Superiore, perches precariously on the ridges of two mountains, one of which sports a kitschy, seventy-foot-tall statue of Christ, arms fully extended. My friend Renato Formisani, the captain of the lovely sailboat Flora, grumbles that the statue faces inland. “Jesus ought to be looking out for us sailors,” he says. “We need the protection more than the landlubbers.”

The Porto di Maratea boasts a fine marina full of both pleasure craft and fishing vessels, the latter of which provide a bounty of fresh seafood for restaurants in Maratea and the nearby village of Fiumicello S. Venere. The Porto di Maratea also offers a broad public beach, but the swimming is better and the coast more scenic below the Marina di Maratea, five kilometers to the south, and at Acquafredda, ten kilometers to the north. Both are reached by an especially tortuous leg of the via Nazionale, the narrow coastal highway reminiscent of U.S. 1 in the vicinity of Big Sur.

A number of fine hotels serve the Maratea area. In town, the best of them is the four-star Laconda delle Donne Monache (via Carlo Mazzei 4, tel. +39 0973 877487), a converted nunnery nestled atop a spur of rock with sweeping views of the coast and mountains. The winding road to the hotel is not recommended for acrophobiacs, who in any event will be uncomfortable just about everywhere in the vertiginous Maratea area. The Grand Hotel Pianeta Maratea (loc. S. Caterina, tel. +39 0973 871966) has less impressive views and, though both modern and well-appointed, lacks the charm of its older neighbor. The less expensive Hotel Settebello (via Fiumicello 52; tel. +39 0973 876277) is somewhat nondescript but has an outstanding restaurant and easy access to the beach.

In Acquafredda, the northernmost of Maratea’s towns, is my favorite hotel, the Villa Cheta (via Timpone, tel. +39 0973 878135). The early nineteenth-century villa, ringed by gardens full of fruit trees and flowers, overlooks a small cove with a horizon-to-horizon view of the Gulf of Policastro; the prix fixe restaurant is outstanding. The nearby Hotel Villa del Mare (via Nazionale 18, tel. +39 0973 878007), with its good restaurant and beautifully kept grounds, overlooks the oak-lined, switchback path down to the turquoise-water cove. Keep an eye out for the vipers that abound hereabouts. They enjoy sunning themselves on the beach just as much as we do.

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