📷 Wikimedia Commons

Where in the world

Italy

Sassi di Matera

Neolithic · Italy

Field notes

civilizations: Neolithic
types: Dwelling · City
built: 9,000 BCE — 1,950 CE
occupied: 9,000 BCE — 2,000 CE
country: Italy

The site

Two districts of dwellings, churches and cisterns carved into the soft limestone of a ravine, inhabited without interruption since the Palaeolithic — among the oldest continuously occupied settlements on Earth. Generations dug homes into the rock one above another, sharing rainwater channels and body heat with their animals. Denounced in the 1950s as a 'national shame' of poverty and disease, the caves were emptied by force, then reborn from the 1990s as a restored heritage town and film set.

Nearby sites