Matera Geography

Matera sits on the western lip of a ravine at the eastern edge of the Murgia, and every feature of the town follows from the rock it is cut into.

The gravina

The Gravina di Matera is a steep-sided canyon, in places two hundred metres deep, cut by a small torrent through soft limestone. The town occupies the slope on one side; the other side is bare plateau. The gorge is why the site was defensible, why it was never expanded outward, and why the two halves of the landscape look so unalike.

Calcarenite

The rock is calcarenite, a soft shelly limestone locally called tufo. It can be cut with hand tools and hardens on exposure, so a dwelling could be excavated rather than built, and the stone removed in excavating it could be used to build the front wall. Most Sassi houses are both at once: a cave at the back, masonry at the front.

Water

There is no surface water on the plateau. Matera survived on rainwater, collected from roofs and slopes into cisterns cut everywhere into the rock — thousands of them, including the vast Palombaro Lungo under the main square. The whole town is hollow underneath.

What lives in it

The gorge and the plateau hold one of Europe's largest colonies of the lesser kestrel, a small migratory falcon that nests in the cavities of the old buildings and under the roof tiles of the town itself. From spring into summer they are constantly overhead and audible, which is an unusual thing for a bird of prey in a town centre.

The Murgia opposite

The far side of the ravine is a protected park of limestone, scrub and caves, holding rock-cut churches and the shelters of the shepherds who used them. It is what the Matera side looked like before anyone built anything.