The secrets of the officinal garden
The Park has useful Visitor Centers to welcome, inform and show the most important resources of this territory.
There are the Palazzo equipped Center, the Pian di Gilio Visitor Center, the Calciano Visitor Center, the Pietrapertosa Visitor Center and the Tree Cults Museum in Accettura.

1. Palazzo equipped center
The main nucleus of the services of the Gallipoli Cognato Park was built in the Palazzo area, in the municipality of Accettura, along the provincial road connecting the Campomaggiore crossroad on the Basentana (S.S. 407) to Accettura.
The Palazzo visitor center was built in a monastic settlement dating back to the eleventh century, of Basilian origin, then passed to the Benedictines and cited in a bull of 1068 as a donation to the Bishop of Tricarico by the Counts of Montescaglioso. Around 1123 it housed Saint Guglielmo from Vercelli who in Gallipoli founded a church and a monastery. Then it passed to the Clarisse, became state property immediately after the unitary process with a law of 1867, it became a rangers office then enriched with other artifacts.

With the birth of the Park, the buildings were used as services for the Park. In the old monastery on the ground floor there is, beyond the church of St. Chiara, a naturalistic museum and the rangers command. On the first floor there is the congress hall. The old botanic garden, now houses the botanical garden with a section dedicated to medicinal herbs and a section hosting the ecomuseum. In the other buildings there is a reception center with a bar - restaurant, an information center, a monitoring center for hunting, a carpentry workshop, a laboratory for medicinal herbs, an olfactoteca, a beekeeping laboratory, a milk processing laboratory, a shop for Park products and also the Park offices.

2. Pian di Gilio Visitor centre
Set up in an old forest garrison located a few hundred meters from the center of Palazzo, it houses an exhibition hall with particular reference to the prey-predator relationship and to the figure of the wolf, predator par excellence of the Park, and its relationship with the ungulate fauna; there are also some geographical and geological themes concerning the Lucanian Dolomites. An environment where you can listen to the reproductions of the verses of some animals that inhabit the forest was also set up.

3. Calciano Visitor centre
Calciano is the only municipality in the Park to look out over the Basento river; for this reason the museum layout accompanies the visitor in a tour around the river's ecosystem. With respect to this issue, the concepts of river environment in terms of landscape and ecosystem are developed in the visitor center. The fauna is represented by mammals, birds, fish and amphibians that inhabit and frequent the Basento river.

4. Pietrapertosa Visitor Centre

The peaks of the Lucanian Dolomites are often crossed by the fascinating flight of different raptors. It is for this reason that the visit centre of Pietrapertosa, located near the ticket office of “Volo dell’angelo” is dedicated to the raptors, with illustrative panels and wooden silhouettes for the identification of birds of prey in flight, to the discovery of hawks, kites, snake eagles, buzzards, sparrow-hawks and more.
"I RAPACI" VISITOR CENTRE
VIA GARIBALDI, N.4
Opening Times in summer:
MORNING: 10:30 - 13:00
AFTERNOON: 15:00 - 18:30