The path of the Calanchi di Pisticci

The term "calanco" means “land that falls, that slips”.

The badlands are clayey conformations smoothed and shaped by water and wind.

Pisticci, a town in the province of Matera, stands on a hill overlooking the gullies, dominating the surrounding countryside.

Leaving the village behind, through a path that leads into the valley below, you reach the slopes of the gullies.

You end up immersed in a unique scenario, an almost lunar landscape, where small and large, often impressive, wrinkled clay dunes run after each other.

From these discontinuous peaks, the view extends to the plains of the Ionian Sea, before the landscape begins to sharpen again, towards the Calanchi della Val d'Agri.

On the slopes of the Calanchi di Pisticci, the small church of the Madonna delle Grazie appears like a sacred oasis in the desert, here venerated as the "protector of the fields".