The oldest city in Europe — 9,000 years of continuous habitation carved into the rock of Basilicata
Matera (population 60,000, capital of Basilicata province) is built across two ravines cut into the Murgia plateau — the Sassi (literally 'stones'), a network of cave dwellings, rock churches, and cisterns carved continuously for 9,000 years, make Matera arguably the oldest inhabited city in the world. The city was declared 'the shame of Italy' in 1950 and its 15,000 cave residents forcibly evacuated; designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993 and European Capital of Culture in 2019, the Sassi are now upscale cave hotels and restaurants. The transformation from eviction to luxury tourism…
Matera's Sassi have been continuously occupied since at least 7000 BCE — prehistoric cave shelters became medieval cave churches, which became family homes, which were eventually condemned as unfit for human habitation in 1950. Carlo Levi's memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli (1945) first brought Matera's extreme poverty to national attention; Prime Minister De Gasperi called the Sassi 'the shame of Italy' and ordered the evacuation. By 1952, 15,000 cave residents had been relocated to new housing estates on the plateau above.