Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano

The Sassi have been inhabited since the Neolithic period, and the cave dwellings were dug into the soft limestone of the Gravina gorge over the centuries by the people of Matera. By the 18th century the two districts held some 15,000 people in the caves, with the animals housed below and the people above, and the overcrowding and the lack of sanitation made them one of the poorest places in Italy. In 1952 the Italian government passed a law to evacuate the Sassi, and the population was moved to new housing on the plateau above, leaving the cave districts abandoned. The Sassi remained empty and decaying until the 1980s, when a slow restoration began; in 1993 they were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first in southern Italy, and the caves were gradually converted into homes, hotels and museums. Matera was the 2019 European Capital of Culture.