The name people in San Fele give their waterfalls does not come from the landscape, it comes from a machine: “u uattënniérë” is the fulling mill, the plant that beat wool using the power of water, and by extension the word ended up naming the falls that produced that power. They form along the Bradano stream, called Bradanello here so as not to confuse it with the river of the same name: it rises in the Matise district, drops in a series of steps above the town, and ends up in the Fiumara di Atella and then the Ofanto. It is not a big watercourse, but for centuries it turned everything that turned in San Fele.
What to see
Four falls are open to the public. U Uattënniérë takes its name from the battendiere, that is, from the fulling mill; U Paradisë is Paradise; U Urtonë, the highest of them all, rises from a tributary of the Bradano in the Corbola gorge. The fourth has the most recent name and the least ancient of reasons: it has been the Cascata degli Innamorati, the lovers' waterfall, since the television series about the brigand Carmine Crocco was filmed in San Fele in 2012.
Along the stream stand the ruins of the workshops the water drove: the mills, which fell silent in the nineteen-thirties, and the fulling mill itself, which in September 2014 the Basilicata heritage authority declared a cultural asset of historical, environmental and ethno-anthropological interest, evidence of the traditional economy of this territory.
Visiting
The paths were not laid out for visitors: they are the old mule tracks that the people of the Montagna district used to come down to the village, and they have kept that gradient. One route starts from Monte Castello, at 937 metres, and before it slips into the woods it lets you look out over the Vulture and the whole Vitalba valley. The local community is working to restore further stretches, so the accessible part may well be larger than the one you find described.
Our editors' tip
Start from the Monte Castello trailhead and take the view on the way out, not on the way back: the Vitalba valley and the Vulture are better looked at on fresh legs, while the climb back up from the bottom of the gorge is the hard part of the day. And do not walk straight past the ruins along the stream: the mills and the fulling mill are on the route, not off it, and they are the reason these waterfalls carry the name they do.