Historic Cities · Italy
Matera through the ages
Matera is a city and the capital of the Province of Matera in the region of Basilicata, in Southern Italy. With a history of continuous occupation dating back to prehistory, it is renowned for its rock-cut urban core, whose twin cliffside zones are known collectively as the Sassi.
Matera in 1750
City of the Sassi
Matera in 1750 is the lived stone city of the Sassi: two amphitheatre-like tiers of cave dwellings carved into the calcarenitic rock, with the Duomo perched on the narrow Civita spur and new baroque façades cutting the cliffline. The walk crosses the Gravina from the Murgia, moves across the Piazza del Sedile into Sasso Barisano and down through Sasso Caveoso to see rock churches, terraced gardens, hanging cisterns and the daily labour of shepherds and householders.
The city reads as honey‑coloured stone: soft calcarenite facades, carved doorways and whitewashed niches stacked roof upon roof like terraces. Two bowl‑shaped Sassi—Barisano to the north and Caveoso to the south—fall in stepped rows to the Gravina, joined by the narrow Civita spur and crowned by the Duomo’s campanile. Narrow alleys, stone stairways and vicinati open to small wells and hanging cisterns; the palette is sunburnt ochre and lime, with flashes of cloth, mule harness and smoke.
The route: 17 streets, squares and views
View from the Murgia → Castello Tramontano → Piazza del Sedile → Duomo on the Civita → Palazzo Pomarici → Chiesa del Purgatorio → Sasso Barisano → Vicinato of Barisano → San Pietro Barisano → Sasso Caveoso → …
Step inside, 9 interiors
Gilded Cathedral Nave · Tufa Wine Cellar · Stacked Cave Dwelling · Family Cave Dwelling · Parish Nave of San Pietro · Frescoed Rock Chapel · Monastic Crypt Church · Hermit's Rock Cell · Communal Bread Oven
Planned from the Wikipedia record: Sassi di Matera.
From the archive
Matera on paper: the old town as it was mapped.
A period plan or bird's-eye view of the old town, drawn between 1500 and 1850 — the streets this page's reconstructions walk. Public domain, with its source named.
Bird's-eye view of Matera, from Pacichelli's Il regno di Napoli in prospettiva (1641)
Cliff-top town seen with dense houses and cave-dwellings, a central bell-tower, a castle on the ridge, labelled churches and surrounding ravines.
1641 · Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla from Sevilla, España · Wikimedia Commons
CC BY 2.0 (plate dated 1641)
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