Matera

Matera is the City of the Sassi, it is located in Basilicata on the plateau of la Murgia a few kilometers from the Apulian border. It is a place that preserves one of the oldest and most fascinating testimonies of human history from the Paleolithic up to the present day.

Matera is renowned for the Sassi, the ancient districts of the city declared in 1993 by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site. Recently the city has obtained another important recognition, it has been designated European Capital of Culture 2019. Matera is characterized by a rocky landscape of the Murgia Materana etched by the deep canyon of the Gravina di Matera that separates the Sassi and the modern city from the Natural History Archaeological Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera.

Visiting the park you can perceive the original environment in which the prehistoric man lived, from which was born the Sassi, a unique inhabited area in the world.

The Sassi of Matera

The Sassi of Matera are a stratified set of buildings partly excavated in the rock and partly built above. It is an urban complex that presents primordial settlements, rock churches, noble buildings, arches, balconies, buildings, sometimes imposing, sometimes seemingly modest, all placed in a rocky context.

The unique sensation perceived by visiting the Sassi di Matera led some great Masters of Cinema, including Pasolini, to set their films masterpieces in this suggestive natural setting. Matera is at the center of an incredible landscape that preserves a great heritage of culture and traditions, and is home to exhibitions of great national and international prestige.

The Sassi of Matera are the two historic districts of the city, the Sasso Barisano facing mainly north and the Sasso Caveoso facing south, both are in an amphitheater shape, separated by the central hill of the Civita on top of which there is Cathedral and its majestic bell tower. Walking along the main axis that connects the two districts, via Bruno Buozzi, via Madonna delle Virtù and Via D’Addozio, it is possible to cross this landscape and admire at the same time the one on the opposite side of the Murgia Materana Park.

Discovery a magical place

Matera is a place that amazes and fascinates visitors for its uniqueness, a place always defined as magical for the ability to offer sensations that are not forgotten. It is an example of a natural and rocky place where a Rupestrian Civilization has developed, an exceptional combination of natural context and man’s way of living and progressing.