Matera
Discover Matera
A concise introduction to Matera, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Matera is a town of about 60,000 people in eastern Basilicata, close to the Puglian border, built along the edge of a limestone gorge.
The old town is the Sassi: two districts of cave dwellings and rock-cut houses, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, separated by the spur of the Civita with the cathedral on top. Below and around them the rock is honeycombed with cisterns, churches and stores.
Behind the Sassi, on level ground, is the Piano — the ordinary town of squares and nineteenth-century streets where most people actually live.
Across the ravine lies the Parco della Murgia Materana, a plateau of scrub and bare rock holding more than a hundred rock-cut churches, many frescoed.
The Sassi were inscribed by UNESCO in 1993, the first site in southern Italy, and Matera was European Capital of Culture in 2019.