Matera, Italy

Matera (Basilicata, Italy) is famous worldwide for its Sassi (the Italian for “stones”), two districts in which “houses” are partly dug into the rock and partly built.
Some of these “houses” are nothing but grottoes, located the ones on the others, so that sometimes streets are located on rooftops.

Matera is the only town in the world where contemporary people can claim to be still living in the same houses of their ancestors of the Paleolithic, albeit revamped and provided with all the modern comforts.

Not only are the Sassi and the surrounding Park a World Heritage since 1993, they are one of the most amazing and peculiar destinations on Earth.

Spending one or two days in Matera, one can visit a furnished cave-dwelling inhabited till the late '50s and some magnificent stone churches with both benedictine and byzantine frescoes, admire the unique architecture of the Sassi, walk in the unpolluted nature of the “Park of the rupestrian churches of the Murgia materana”, discovering at the same time the many layers of the long human history of this spectacular place.

Planning a longer stay (3-7 days), you will have the chance to discover many other spots of unrivalled beauty: Metaponto, the important colony of the so called "Magna Græcia" where Pythagoras established his school, the “ghost town” of Craco, the Literary Park “Carlo Levi” of Aliano, the Saracen village of the Rabatana, the Roman vestiges of Venosa - hometown of the Latin poet Horace, the castles of Melfi, Lagopesole and Castel del Monte,the breath-taking Dolomiti Lucane, the Pollino National Park, Maratea - nicknamed “the Pearl of the Tyrrhenian Sea” and, the last but not the least, the Dinosaurs valley of Altamura.