Matera: What to see in the labyrinthine city of the Sassi

National Geographic Travel Digital Director

In #7: The rock churches of the Materana Murgia

Olivares, haciendas with some that others trulli, cereal fields ... the immediate vicinity of Matera somewhat miss the traveler that crosses Basilicata in search of the promised gorge and throats promised.Therefore, the best way to salivate and contextualize this stone city is postponing its visit to dedicate it a few minutes of contemplation.The destination are any of the chapels excavated in the rock of the east slope of the gravina torrent.Bowning its interiors, as collected as powerful, is to advance that underground voyeurism that is practiced in the city.But with an incentive: both in the rock hermitage of the Madonna delle Vergini and in that of San Giovanni, in San Falcione and in the Madonna Delle TRET.And with an incentive: they are not crowded places and allow to discover in a more wild way what the cavities were that would later become what Matera is today.

In #6: The Duomo de Matera

This church has, saving the distances, the power of lighthouse for the traveler who has San Marco in Venice.In fact, it is very common to meet signs on the labyrinthine stairs and alleys that indicate its location.Therefore, visiting it is almost like a reward and, even, as a perfect idea to start through the city above, for the monumental.Then the devane will come for its calcareous microcosm.The fact is that the cathedral of Santa Maria della Bruna and di Sant'eustachio - its official name - is not a portentoso temple, but it is large enough to be a reference in the city's skyline.In short distances, its outer sobriety, its harmony of forms and its sculpted side doors with fineness surprises.Inside, the frescoes of the roof and the occasional Byzantine delirium make the traveler be located in an aesthetic speech that is halfway between the East and the West.In short, a beautiful chaos.

In #5: Sedile and San Francesco, cultural squares

The Via Duomo is the most helpful street to leave the surroundings of the cathedral and to enter what could be called the most civilized mathera of the old town.Sedile and San Francesco squares are two esplanade stimulants in which life expands, offering oxygen to the cloustrophobic and private preserve to the terraces.Although the temptation here is to surrender to a local beer Maridada with a crossone made with Materano bread, it is convenient to put aside the gluttony to visit three singular buildings.The first, the church of San Francesco, whose facade is much more interesting than its interior.Then, the barquísima church of Purgatory, which surprises with the amount of decorative skulls that are outside its exterior.And to culminate this moment of tourism to the Roman, the Sedile Palace, a neoclassical work that symbolizes that time when Matera, under Bourbon control of Naples, dreamed of being a modern and beautiful city.

In #4: The Plaza Vittorio Emanuele...at all levels

The limits of the historic center are protected by a castle as extensive as bland and by another square, that of Vittorio Emanuelle, which seems to warn the travelers that after it there are only steps and narrows.However, this place is much more than a key urban element to order the past and the present.Here is the Palumbaro Lungo, a set of tanks built in the 16th century with which water was collected and distributed throughout the city.About her is the viewpoint Luigi Guerricchio in which, suddenly, silence is made because everything is astonishment.Again Matera's rock panoramic.Again the retina dilated by surprise.The saturated camera again.And yet, everything is new because the perspective is different.And magnetic.

In #3: Descend by Sassi Barisano

The old town of Matera is divided into two neighborhoods: the Sassi (set of caves) Barisano and the caveoso Sassi.The first occupies the northern part and is distinguished by having a less medieval street and by alternating houses built with stone with inhabited caves.The sensation, especially in the highest part, is to be in a Sicilian city while it occurs with unexpected monuments such as the precious Romanesque church of San Giovanni, probably the most beautiful of all.Of course, when the slope is steep the vicinatos, the courtyards surrounded by caves where the rock matters breathed and that gathered social life once.The manual of use of this whole mud is simple, let go, go up and down and, as a icing on, to hurThe Church of San Pedro.

In #2: Zigzaguear for the caveoso Sassi

Matera separates from the gravine ravine by a manual paved street that acts as a balcony on the throat.That is the one that leads from the Sassi Barisano to the caveoso Sassi, the oldest cave neighborhood of Matera.A fact that is perceived in its constructions, more ajadas and cohambrosas, and also in the route of the streets much more reviderable and narrow.Although your visit is marked by posters that indicate the tourist route, here it is to wear out sole and, if you do not spend the night in any of the rock accommodations that dot the city, take a look at the different houses-she says that,Museum disguised, they show what the day was like underground.

In #1: contemplate the city from Santa Maria de Idris

The almost inevitable goal of wandering through the caveoso Sassi is to upload the mound where the church of Santa María de Idris is.Inside, the most passionate about art can find raffles of great value while the rest of the travelers have in their immediate natural balconies from contemplating everything, from the most modern houses that hang south of the throat to the perfect panorama of the town.Of course, to draw it or capture it, it is convenient to take into account the presence of the bell tower of San Pedro Caveoso.The game with this baroque construction can be very capricious.Be that as it may, it is a new opportunity to raise the visa and pinch, to look again in front of this city that does not tire of doing miracles, of reinventing itself, of claiming and erecting, finally, as the great beauty of the Southern Italy.