Greek settlers from Magna Graecia are said to have founded a town called Maudoro in this valley of the Basento river as early as the sixth century BCE, but the Castelmezzano visible today took shape after Saracen raids pushed the population up onto a cliff amid the sandstone spires known as the Dolomiti Lucane, according to local tradition following a shepherd named Paolino who found the defensible perch.
Normans later built a castle on the rock between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries, whose scant ruins still cling to the peaks above the houses. Named among Budget Travel's "best places you've never heard of" and one of The Telegraph's most beautiful Italian villages, the town shares the Volo dell'Angelo zipline with neighboring Pietrapertosa, sending riders across the gorge between the two villages' summits, but its own stone stairways, cut directly into the rock face, are worth the climb even without it.
