With the establishment of the Italian National Strategy for inland areas, the lawmaker laid the basis for both strategic action relating to the country’s rural areas and promotion and support of best practices to counter and possibly reverse the phenomena of abandonment and depopulation of peripheral areas.

There are many and different causes that can lead to the abandonment of a site, such as:

a. natural factors (e.g., earthquakes, landslides, floods, volcanic eruptions, environmental conditions, diseases),
b. anthropogenic factors (e.g., wars, economic fluctuations, demographic aspects, transfer of the population to urbanized areas, marginalization and isolation of villages, catastrophic events technological and industrial in nature).

During the last decades of the XX century, the phenomenon of abandonment has assumed significant importance following the profound natural, social, economic, and cultural changes that have involved the Old Continent. These changes have led to a rapid expansion of urban centres to the detriment of both smaller settlements and marginal rural villages that were abandoned with the consequent increase in number of “ghost towns”. The phenomenon takes on a statistically significant especially in Italy, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, and Albania.

However, Italy is among the countries with the largest number of “ghost towns”. In particular, Basilicata hosts some towns depopulated towards the end of the XIX century or in the XX century. These are partial or total abandonments such as Alianello and Craco, in the province of Matera, and Brienza and Campomaggiore Vecchio, in the province of Potenza.