Undiscovered Italy: 7 reasons you should walk the alternative camino

30-11-2020 | Wanderlust

Those in search of the next great ‘camino’ should go to southern Italy. Here the newly recreated Cammino Basiliano (Way of St Basil) traces a path over a thousand years old…

When it comes to Europe’s big trails, few travellers look past the Camino de Santiago. But it wasn’t always the case. For centuries, many of the routes that make up this iconic Way were lost. It begs an interesting question: what other major historic trails are waiting to be rediscovered?

Those in search of the next great ‘camino’ should point their compass towards southern Italy. Here the newly recreated Cammino Basiliano (Way of St Basil) traces the sandal-trod paths of the Italo-Greek Basilian monks who settled in the region of Calabria over a millennia ago.

What this 1,390km trail reveals as it skirts the upper aches and toes of southern Italy, from Rocca Imperiale to Reggio Calabria, is not just a wild, mountainous land little touched by development or tourism, but a history few travellers (or Italians) would recognise, dating all the way back to the era of Magna Graecia, when the Greeks first settled here en masse in the 8th century BC.

Here are seven reasons why you should make it your next great adventure…