Craco, the ghost town with a film career
A landslide in 1963 set off the slow abandonment of Craco, a hilltop village of nearly two thousand people perched above the clay gullies of Basilicata, in Italy's deep south. By the early 1980s it stood empty. Then the film industry discovered its silent streets: Mel Gibson shot scenes of The Passion of the Christ here, and James Bond came through in Quantum of Solace. Today the old town can only be entered along a guided route made safe for visitors, while the empty houses keep working as one of cinema's favourite Italian sets.