Matera: A prehistoric cave city transformed from national shame to cultural icon
In short: Carved into the limestone cliffs of Southern Italy, Matera is one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited settlements. Once a symbol of extreme poverty, its ancient cave dwellings were abandoned by government decree in the 1950s. Today, this subterranean city has been reclaimed as a thriving global destination.
Matera’s urban core, the Sassi, consists of roughly twelve levels of cave habitations burrowed into the western face of a deep ravine known as the Gravina. While scholars debate the exact timeline of its origins, the site has been occupied since at least the Paleolithic era, potentially dating back to the tenth millennium BC. This complex, defensible geography allowed the city to survive centuries of shifting rule, including Roman, Byzantine, Lombard, and Arab conquests.
By the eighteenth century, the city had developed a stark physical class divide. The elite lived in the Piano, an open plain above the gorge, while the peasant population remained in the overcrowded, subterranean Sassi. By the turn of the twentieth century, these dwellings were deemed unfit for modern life. Between 1952 and the 1970s, the Italian government forcibly relocated the entire population to new public housing, leaving the Sassi largely abandoned and dangerous for decades.
The city's fortunes shifted in 1986, when new legislation enabled the restoration and reoccupation of the Sassi, attracting a wealthy middle class and tourism. In 1993, UNESCO designated the site a World Heritage location, and in 2019, Matera was named a European Capital of Culture. Today, the city is a popular filming location, having served as the backdrop for major productions like The Passion of the Christ and No Time to Die, cementing its status as a unique intersection of ancient history and modern regeneration.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: Matera
- Also: Wikidata — Matera · CC0
- Also: Wikidata — Matera · CC0
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