Matera by Greg

Matera by Greg

Matera … The oldest city in Italy and the oldest in Europe, Matera is a UNESCO World Heritage city that was also the European Capital of Culture in 2019. It doesn’t ascend a hill, instead it scrambles down a ravine, tucked into the folds of the landscape in an architecturally astounding feat of cityscape that is Matera’s attraction, called the Sassi.
Matera, Basilicata’s jewel, may be the world’s third-longest continuously inhabited human settlement. Natural caves in the tufa limestone, exposed as the Gravina cut its gorge, attracted the first inhabitants perhaps 7000 years ago. More elaborate structures were built atop them. Today, looking across the gorge to Matera’s huddled sassi (cave dwellings) it seems you’ve been transported back to the ancient Holy Land.
Old Matera is split into two sections, the Sasso Barisano and the Sasso Caveoso, separated by a ridge upon which sits Matera’s gracious duomo (cathedral). The sassi, many little more than one-room caves, once contained such appalling poverty and unthinkable living conditions that in the 1950s Matera was denounced as the ‘Shame of Italy’, and the sassi-dwellers were moved on. Only in later decades has the value of this extraordinarily built environment been recognised, and in 2019 the city was recognised as a European Capital of Culture.

Greg : Photos