The only region in Italy that can boast two names – Basilicata, however, is the officially recognised one – is a land in which human and natural history have left important traces ever since it has emerged from the sea. In olden times it was known as Lucania, from the Latin ‘lucas’ either because it was a woody land, or because it was populated by the ‘Liky’ an ancient people coming from Anatolia, or maybe because it was the land reached by a warlike people who had followed the sun, known as ‘luc’. It was called Basilicata for the first time in a document dating from 1175, originating probably from the name ‘Basiliskos’, a Byzantine administrator.
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