Italy has 20 regions. Each one could qualify as its own country. They have their geography, customs, cuisine, history and dialect. I’ve been to 19 of them. If you’re dreaming of an Italian vacation but don’t know where to go, use this as a guide. This is the first 10 regions in alphabetical order. I’ll post the other 10 next week.
Matera is the world’s third oldest city, according to Traveller magazine. Only Aleppo, Syria, and Jericho, Palestine, are older. So unless you like your pizza in a war zone, Matera is the place to explore. Matera was first inhabited in the Paleolithic Era which ended about 10,000 B.C. Back then, Matera’s inhabitants were discovering stone tools and how to hunt and gather. It has been continuously inhabited for the last 9,000 years. However, the neighborhood where I’m standing and where my Marina and I are staying, wasn’t around less than 40 years ago. It was abandoned, an empty shell of a novelty.
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