Small town, perched at an altitude of 500 metres, at the gates of the park of the Piccole Dolomiti Lucane. All around, a dense forest and the majestic profile of Mount La Croccia.
The town is an agricultural center on the edge of the Lucanian Apennines located in the upper valley of the Cavone river in the northwestern part of the province of Matera. Its territory borders on the "park of Gallipoli Cognato and the Piccole Dolomiti Lucane". The small inhabited center, perched on a rocky hill, at 492 m a.s.l., is surrounded by the spectacular profile of Mount La Croccia and the Impiso mountains (on average about 1200 meters above sea level) cloaked in dark forests and included in the aforementioned park. : ridges that separate the two Lucanian provinces in this area. To the south rises, beyond the bed of the Salandrella stream, on the border with San Mauro Forte, the steep and imposing relief of Serra Boscone (790 m), which, together with the contiguous Serra Cavallo and the Serra Antica to the west, territory of Oliveto Lucano, constitute a picturesque and suggestive wooded backdrop immediately behind the town. The Garaguso wood is very dense and impervious, consisting of large specimens of oak and Turkey oaks, with a thick undergrowth of holm oaks, alaterni and other evergreens in the lower altitudes; hornbeam, maple, dogwood, ash everywhere. Rich in springs, one of which also supplied the town, the "Boscone" of Garaguso was once populated by a fauna typical of uncontaminated and wild areas (squirrels, roe deer, wolves, as indicated by some microtoponyms of the area), to the point that the area was favored for hunting by the Revertera Dukes, as stated in the plaque of the eighteenth-century ducal palace in the center of the town. The cliff on which the town stands is very steep and surrounded by deep gorges, one of which is crossed by the picturesque "devil's bridge". It borders to the north with the municipality of Grassano (17 km), to the east with Salandra (11 km), to the south with San Mauro Forte (15 km), and to the west with Oliveto Lucano (7 km) and Calciano (7 km). It is part of the Medio Basento mountain community.
Translated by Google •
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