Matera: Stones and Churches

Matera, a thousand-year-old city, jealous keeper of its origins and traditions, detached from any form of urban engineering. Chosen as the capital of European culture in 2019, Matera today proposes itself as a symbolic city of the south, as well as the one that best combines tradition and modernity. Taking part in a Matera Stones and Churches Tour means getting to know the city to the full, getting to the heart of its history, its traditions, its culture and its culinary art. A city that has always been inhabited by man, since the Palaeolithic, has been able to best exploit the simple resources of nature, integrating in perfect harmony with it. The two districts of the city, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, together with their superb rock churches and small streets, tell of a city and a housing system unique in the world. Matera is a picturesque, inimitable city that deserves to be visited at least once, a small museum carved into the rock and tuff. The houses, the churches, the huge cisterns, here everything seems confused and spontaneous, but in reality it is not so. A rational whole, a way of life that only through the aforementioned wonderful tour will you have the opportunity to deepen.

Things to know about Matera Stones

The city of Matera is spread over two large natural amphitheaters which are the Sasso Caveoso and the Sasso Barisano. The Sasso Caveoso is characterized by houses built one above the other with the shape reminiscent of one of the steps of a classical amphitheater and at the top of which is dominated by a limestone cliff called Monte Lione within which one of the most important rock churches stands out , Santa Maria de Idris. The second, however, the Sasso Barisano, develops in a chasm of rocks carved into the slopes. With its caves and houses carved into the tuff and climbing close to a cliff, Matera is a natural spectacle in the eyes of anyone who has had the pleasure of visiting it at least once in their life. Entering Matera is like entering a timeless place, with its ancient churches and its narrow and small streets that intertwine in a disordered harmony. Why the name “stone”? These two neighborhoods, similar to inverted hills, have the shape with which we imagined Dante Alighieri’s Hell at school. In that narrow space pass the streets which at the same time constitute floors for those who leave the houses above and roofs for those below. After a long abandonment, at the end of the 80s, the stones were restored to their dignity, their splendor and their historical-cultural beauty. In 1993 Matera became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in which the stones and park of the rock churches are recognized as the exceptional testimony of disappeared civilizations, of an architectural and landscape ensemble witnessing significant moments in the history of humanity.