Towering above the southern landscape on a rocky hilltop lies the silhouette of Craco, a ghost town that acts as a relic of an ancient and mysterious Italy. Craco is about 25 miles inland from the Gulf of Taranto in southern Italy. The town sits atop a 400-metre-high cliff that overlooks the Cavone River valley.
The town was first settled by the Greeks in the sixth-century BCE, though tombs dating to the eighty-century BCE hint at an even older existence.
It owes its present layout to the medieval period: in the 12th century, a watchtower was added by the Normans, with a host of palazzi built in the following centuries.
Craco was caught up in the upheaval of the Italian unification in the 19th century, and, by the 20th century, saw an exodus of sons leaving for the New World due to poor agricultural conditions.
However, it was a freak of nature that proved to be the village’s final undoing. Its precarious location, combined with a series of violent earthquakes and landscapes, saw Craco deemed uninhabitable after World War Two. In 1963 almost all the inhabitants were moved to a nearby settlement and it was wholly abandoned in 1980.
In 1963, Craco began to be evacuated due to a series of landslides, with inhabitants moving to the valley of Craco Peschiera. The landslides seem to have been provoked by works of infrastructure, sewer and water systems. In 1972, a flood worsened the situation further, preventing a possible repopulation of the historic centre.
After the 1980 Irpinia earthquake, a devastating 6.9 magnitude quake that killed nearly 2,500 people, injured at least 7,700 and left a quarter of a million homeless across a vast region in central and southern Italy, the ancient site was completely abandoned.
Today, guided tours allow visitors to explore the ruins – while wearing a hard hat.
Crumbling staircases provide access to the houses stacked on top of each other which show its advanced state of decay, with doors and shutters damaged or missing and rubbish and broken furniture littering the floors.
There are towers where bells no longer chime and rusted balconies where families once hung their washing. Weeds also sprout at the altar of San Nicola church, which now has a view of the sky as its ceiling has collapsed.
A few churches are still maintained, including the church of Santa Maria della Stella, where a statue of the Virgin and Child was miraculously discovered by a passing shepherd. The Child has gone missing, but the Virgin is still there.
According to a grim legend, recalled in Carlo Levi’s 1945 memoir “Christ Stopped at Eboli”, a tavern run by a temptress used to seduce her patrons and turn them into vinegar.
In more recent times, Craco has found fame as a film set, including Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ (2004).
Ghost towns have a particular poignance in Italy, where the birth rate is currently at its lowest since records began in 1861 – the region of Basilicata alone loses 3,000 young people every year. In 2024, Italy’s birth rate is projected to be 7.026 births per 1,000 people, a 0.14 percent decline from 2023.
In 2007, the descendants of the emigrants of Craco in the United States formed the “Craco Society”, a non-profit organisation which preserves the culture, traditions, and history of the town.