On 27 December 2000 Gianfranco Lionetti recognised, on the shore of the lake, the bones of a Pleistocene whale, originally about 27 metres long. The skeleton surfaced again in August 2006, when the water dropped; the dig closed in 2011 and the remains, jacketed in plaster and packed into wooden crates, travelled to the Domenico Ridola national archaeological museum in Matera, where since December 2022 they have been on show as Giuliana degli Abissi. The lake that kept them is not natural: it was formed between 1950 and 1957 by damming the Bradano, paid for by the Marshall Plan to irrigate the fields.
What to see
The reservoir drew water birds at once, and protection arrived in layers: a wildlife protection oasis in 1976, a landscape restriction the year after, naturalistic management handed to WWF Italia in 1989 under an agreement with the Consorzio di Bonifica di Bradano e Metaponto, a regional reserve in 2000 covering 1000 hectares across Matera, Miglionico and Grottole, and a Ramsar site from May 2003. Since 1991 the Bradano ravine below the dam has belonged to the Parco della Murgia Materana, and so to the UNESCO World Heritage list.
Some 180 bird species have been counted. Winter brings the great white egret, the cormorant, the pochard, the wigeon, the shelduck, the greylag goose and the rare ferruginous duck; grey herons, little egrets, grebes and coots stay on the water. Among the raptors are red and black kites, the buzzard, the odd osprey, and on the ravine walls the Egyptian vulture. The symbol of the WWF oasis is a tiny passerine, the penduline tit. On land there are porcupine, badger, wildcat, beech marten and a few otters. The Matera bank is flatter, the Miglionico and Grottole side more rolling and steeper; a reforestation belt of Aleppo pine, cypress and eucalyptus rings the water, and between the pines and the lake lie meadows that the reservoir floods and uncovers as its level shifts.
Visiting
The way in is the Lago San Giuliano exit on state road 7, about ten kilometres from Matera. Winter and the migration seasons are the moments worth choosing: that is when the waterbirds are many. Look first at the periodically flooded meadows between the plantation and the shore, because there the water level decides what you will see; and below the dam the Bradano runs through a ravine at times fifty metres deep, with poplars, willows and tamarisks on the floor and drought-loving plants along the rim.
Our editors' tip
End the day in Matera at the Museo Ridola: the whale you brushed past on the shore is there, and the display opened in December 2022 begins with the right humerus and the tympanic bulla, together with the animal and plant remains found alongside it.