The Sassi di Matera (meaning “stones of Matera”) is classified as World Heritage Site by Unesco; more than a monument it is a system of life and millennia development model.
The Sassi represent a unique urban agglomeration in the world in the arid territory of the Murgia.
Matera stands indeed on a high limestone plateau with spectacular anomaly: a central groove, a true canyon 70/80 meters, crossed by the Gravina.
The territory of Matera was inhabited continuously from the Palaeolithic.
With specific regard to the neighborhoods of the Sassi, they were born in the late XV century. Populations that have followed have left a complex urban system where buildings are superimposed on the natural cavities.
Between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the Sassi districts became the home of the poorest social classes of the city.
They then moved to a new neighborhood to rehabilitate and clean up the area. Today it is possible to observe the original core of the Sassi and dwellings carved directly into the rock and tuff, experiencing a unique feeling: to be in a manger.
The beautiful landscape of Matera has been the setting for many famous films and many less famous, Italian and foreign, such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ.