A UNESCO World Heritage site, the Sassi Caveoso and Barisano of Matera constitute a millenary complex of troglodyte architecture, a crowded beehive of rocks, unparalleled in size in the whole Mediterranean, of underground dwellings and ancient rock churches, where the artistic styles of Byzantine monastic art undergoes Lombard influences. In no other place in the world has the most primitive form of human settlement, the Palaeolithic, assumed the dimensions of a city, deriving from its conformation a steep, cavernous, almost minute fretwork aspect, a nativity scene carved with a chisel on barren, chalky sides of ravines, karst canyons from which the Murge are engraved, vast karst plateau. The various attempts at urban modernization, from the Middle Ages to modernity, failed to distort the ancestral soul of Matera, and actually, on the contrary, ended up absorbed and reworked in it, under the banner of inventive originality. Our walking guided city tour explores this maze of streets, squares, terraces, and its main landmarks, punctuating the visit with gourmet stops to taste typical local products.
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