Current Time in Matera, Italy

Matera is an ancient city in the Basilicata region of southern Italy, situated on a plateau above a deep ravine carved by the Gravina torrent. With a population of approximately 60,000, it is one of the most extraordinary and historically complex cities in Europe — indeed, in the world. Matera is renowned for its sassi, a system of cave dwellings and cave churches excavated directly from the soft tufa rock over thousands of years, creating a city built into the earth itself that has been continuously inhabited for at least nine thousand years, making it one of the oldest continuously inhabited settlements on Earth. The sassi were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, and in 2019 Matera was designated the European Capital of Culture.

The origins of human settlement in the Matera area reach back to the Paleolithic and Neolithic periods, when the rocky gorge of the Gravina provided both natural shelter and a defensible position. Over millennia, the cave dwellings were progressively elaborated and expanded — chambers were deepened, facades were carved, cisterns and channels were cut to collect rainwater, and churches were hollowed from the rock and decorated with Byzantine and Romanesque frescoes. By the medieval period, Matera was a thriving city built vertically into the cliffs above the ravine, with thousands of cave dwellings stacked on top of one another connected by paths, stairs, and underground passages.

The sassi are divided into two main districts: the Sasso Caveoso, the lower and more complete ancient district, and the Sasso Barisano, the upper district facing the new city. Walking through these quarters today is a vertiginous experience: the carved facades of cave churches, the domed cisterns, the interconnected courtyards, and the views across the ravine to the Murgia Timone plateau — where a network of rock churches with Byzantine frescoes extends across the opposite side — combine to create an atmosphere utterly unlike any other city in Europe. The rock church of Santa Maria de Idris, the crypt of the Original Sin with its eighth-century frescoes, and the numerous other cave churches scattered through the sassi are among the most remarkable sacred spaces in Italy.

By the mid-twentieth century, the sassi had become notorious for poverty, overcrowding, and disease: malaria was endemic, and the cave dwellings lacked sanitation or running water. In 1952, the Italian government declared the sassi a national disgrace and ordered their evacuation, relocating approximately 15,000 inhabitants to new public housing built outside the ravine. For several decades the sassi stood empty. Then, from the 1980s onward, a reversal began: the caves were recognized as a heritage of extraordinary value, restoration began, and by the 1990s the process of repopulation was underway, with cave dwellings converted into hotels, restaurants, homes, and cultural spaces.

Matera's film history is remarkable: its distinctive ancient urban landscape has served as the setting for Jerusalem in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, for the early city sequences in Bond film No Time to Die, and for numerous other productions requiring an ancient or otherworldly urban setting. The city hosted important G7 meetings and has attracted increasing international attention as one of the most visually compelling destinations in Europe.

The University of Basilicata has a faculty in Matera, and the city hosts research institutions and cultural organizations connected to its status as a World Heritage Site. Matera is accessible by rail and road from Bari, approximately 65 kilometers to the east. The nearest airport is Bari Karol Wojtyła Airport, which serves numerous European destinations.

Matera is a city that defies easy categorization — simultaneously prehistoric and contemporary, poverty-stricken and celebrated, obscure and globally famous. Its sassi are among the most astonishing human landscapes on Earth, and no description fully prepares visitors for the experience of standing above the ravine and looking out over this ancient, layered, extraordinary city.