Located between the Lucanian Apennines and the Ionian Sea, the ghost town of Craco still retains wonderful traces of its history and its past.

A significant testimony of the history of Craco is related to its name, which in 1060 was "Graculum", or "small plowed field". The first human traces of the village date back to the eighth century B.C. A historical period relevant to the history of Craco is the tenth century, when the village was a settlement of Italo-Byzantine monks.

The structure of houses perched around the square tower that dominates the center dates back to the period between 1154 and 1168, during the reign of Frederick II. At that time Craco was an important military strategic center and in 1276 the ghost village of Craco was also a university.

Later, however, the invasions of the brigands, who, during the Napoleonic decade, attacked the town several times, both in 1807 and in 1861.

The recent history of Craco is then marked by the disastrous landslide of 1963: the collapse of the houses and buildings of the village was not a sudden event, but slow, so much so that the inhabitants were forced to leave their homes in 1974 to move further downstream, in Craco Peschiera. The landslide of 1963, however, was not the first catastrophic natural event to hit the country: already in 1688, in fact, there was a terrible earthquake that had as its epicenter Craco-Pisticci. This earthquake has led to the formation of some landslides latent on a territory that already by its nature is unstable.