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A bit of History
Matera is the third oldest town in the world to be continuously inhabited for more than 10,000 years. This unique landscape with a town shaped by water – has fascinated humans since the dawn of time. Matera is a town that has adapted to change – constantly renewing and reinventing itself.
Water is the real protagonist in the millennial history of the Sassi, a primary and indispensable resource, which allowed the lives of the Sassi’s inhabitants to continue over time, thanks to their ingenious rainwater collection system.
Many of the caves and houses that line the rocky spur of the Gravina canyon, inhabited since the Bronze era, hold architectural treasures within and which are not visible to the naked eye.
The need to collect rainwater led the Sassi’s inhabitants to create a series of interconnected cisterns within the intricate labyrinth of dwellings – all dug out of the limestone rock by hand over the centuries. A complex system of well-designed canals and slopes allowed the house’s cisterns to be filled without wasting water: once the maximum capacity of the cisterns had been reached on the upper levels, the overflow would then pass into the cisterns of the houses on the lower levels.
Many of the restored rooms and houses still allow us to admire this timeless hydraulic engineering technique. Our guest house allows guests to see this ingenuity firsthand: our double room has a cistern, which shows Matera’s ancient origins.
In 1993 the town of Matera was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, thanks in part to the water collection system which characterizes the unique urban architecture of the Sassi. This is what finally allowed the area to begin restoration and renovation work.
This long and complicated recovery and enhancement process has allowed the ancient limestone quarters to become protagonists of city life once again.
In 2014 the city was elected European Capital of Culture for the year 2019 and is now proud to welcome thousands of visitors from all over the world every year.