How Matera Went From Italy’s Shame to One of Its Greatest Treasures

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In 1952, Italy’s prime minister stood before parliament and called one of his own cities “the shame of Italy.” Tens of thousands of people were living in ancient caves — families, grandparents, children, all crammed into single rooms carved from rock, with no running water and no electricity. Their donkeys lived beside them for warmth. The government ordered them out.

Today, those same caves fetch millions of euros. The city Italy once tried to hide is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a former European Capital of Culture, and one of the most photographed places on earth.

A City Older Than Civilisation as We Know It

Matera sits on the edge of a deep ravine in Basilicata, in Italy’s deep south. People have lived here for at least 9,000 years — longer than many of the world’s oldest known cities. It is one of the few places on earth where human habitation has been continuous from the Stone Age to the present day.

The Sassi — which simply means “stones” in Italian — are two neighbourhoods carved directly into the ravine walls. Early settlers dug into the soft tufa rock, hollowing out homes that stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. Generation after generation built upon what came before, stacking centuries of life into the hillside like a great stone honeycomb.

By the mid-20th century, more than 15,000 people still called the Sassi home. There was no plan, no grid — just an extraordinary tangle of homes, churches, alleyways, and ancient cisterns tumbling down toward the ravine floor.

What Life Inside the Caves Was Really Like

A typical Sassi home was one room cut into the rock. A whole family — parents, children, grandparents — slept, ate, and cooked in that single space. In winter, families brought their animals inside for warmth.

Beneath every home, the settlers had carved cisterns to collect rainwater. Water ran off rooftops, filtered through the rock, and gathered below. The system was so efficient it supplied the entire city for millennia. Without it, no one could have survived here.

But poverty was deep and generational. Malaria was common. Infant mortality was high. When writer Carlo Levi published Christ Stopped at Eboli in 1945 — describing the abandoned, forgotten south of Italy — Matera became a symbol of a nation divided between north and south, ancient and modern.

The Year Italy Looked Away

Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi visited Matera in 1952 and was appalled. He called the Sassi an affront to the Italian nation and pushed through a law to relocate every resident to new housing blocks built on the plateau above the ravine.

Families were moved by force. Many wept as they left. However harsh life in the caves had been, the Sassi were home — a community built over thousands of years. The modern flats above felt cold and foreign.

The ancient neighbourhoods fell silent. Doors that had been opened every morning for centuries were locked and left. For decades, the Sassi sat empty, a source of shame rather than pride.

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How the World Changed Its Mind

The shift came slowly. In the 1980s, artists and architects began to look at the Sassi differently — not as a failure, but as a miracle of human ingenuity. A settlement that had sustained life for nine millennia deserved respect, not erasure.

In 1993, UNESCO added Matera to its World Heritage list, calling the Sassi “an outstanding example of a rock-cut settlement.” The city that Italy had tried to forget became something to be celebrated.

Mel Gibson filmed The Passion of the Christ here in 2004, using the ancient stone streets as a stand-in for Jerusalem. Matera was named a European Capital of Culture for 2019. Hotels opened in former cave homes. Restaurants carved dining rooms into the rock. The cisterns that once held drinking water became atmospheric wine cellars.

What You Will Find When You Visit

There are two Sassi districts: Caveoso to the south and Barisano to the north. Both spill down into the ravine from the old city, connected by narrow lanes and sudden stairways that drop away without warning.

Inside the rock churches — there are more than 150 of them — you can still see Byzantine frescoes painted by monks who lived here in medieval times. The Cripta del Peccato Originale, a short drive from the city, contains some of the finest early medieval rock art in southern Italy.

If you visit Alberobello’s trulli or explore the Puglia coastline, Matera is an easy two-hour detour that most visitors skip entirely — which means the ancient streets remain wonderfully quiet.

Come at sunset. Stand at the belvedere on the opposite side of the ravine and watch the light turn the tufa gold. The city glows. It is impossible, looking at it, to see anything shameful — only something extraordinary.

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