Maratea Geography

Maratea occupies a narrow strip where the Lucanian Apennines meet the Tyrrhenian Sea, and there is very little flat ground anywhere in it.

Thirty kilometres of coast

Basilicata is almost entirely inland. Its short Tyrrhenian frontage, squeezed between Campania to the north and Calabria to the south, is roughly thirty kilometres long and belongs almost wholly to this one commune. That accident of administrative geography is why a landlocked region has a seaside town at all.

Mountain into sea

The land falls steeply from around 600 metres to the water in a few kilometres. Monte San Biagio rises directly behind the borgo, and the coast below is cliff broken by small coves and shingle beaches rather than any continuous shore. The SS18 runs along it as a corniche, high above the water.

Limestone and caves

The rock is limestone, and it is riddled with caves both above and below sea level — the show cave near the marina is one of many, and divers use several of the submerged ones.

Santo Janni

A low rocky islet lies offshore, used as an anchorage in Roman times. The seabed around it holds scattered amphorae and the remains of cargo, and it is a protected underwater archaeological area.

Behind the mountain

Inland the ground rises quickly into the Pollino massif, the largest national park in Italy, straddling the Basilicata-Calabria border and reaching over two thousand metres. Maratea therefore sits between high mountains and open sea within about twenty kilometres, and in a good spring you can be among snow patches in the morning and in the water in the afternoon. The slopes between are wooded and thinly populated, and the old routes inland were mule tracks rather than roads well into the twentieth century.