Bernalda

Bernalda is a town in Matera province, Basilicata, at about 127 m elevation between the Bradano and Basento rivers, near the ancient Greek colony area of Metaponto. Settlement in the area dates back to expansion from small 8th-century-BC communities around Metaponto, but the town in its present form was founded in 1470, when Bernardino de Bernaudo, a courtier of the Aragonese king, moved the earlier village of Camarda to its current hilltop site and gave it his name.

The town's Aragonese Castle has medieval origins and shows a layering of Norman, Swabian, Angevin, and later modifications over the centuries, with cylindrical towers, battlemented walls, and a still-visible lift bridge at its main entrance.

Bernalda is also known as the ancestral hometown of film director Francis Ford Coppola's grandfather. In 2004, Coppola bought Palazzo Margherita, a palazzo built in 1892 for the Margherita family, and the Coppola family converted it into a small luxury hotel; it was the site of Sofia Coppola's 2011 wedding to Thomas Mars.

The Aragonese Castle, with its medieval-through-early-modern layers of construction, and Palazzo Margherita, the 1892 palazzo now run as a hotel by the Coppola family, are Bernalda's principal landmarks.

Palazzo Margherita, the 1892 palazzo owned by the Coppola family, operates as a small luxury hotel in the town.

Bernalda is close to Metaponto, the ancient Greek colony site on the Ionian coast, within Matera province.