Sassi di Matera

Описание: The Sassi di Matera are two districts (Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano) of the Italian city of Matera, Basilicata, well-known for their ancient cave dwellings inhabited since the Paleolithic period.

Along with the park of the Rupestrian Churches, it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1993.

The Sassi originate from a prehistoric troglodyte settlement and are suspected to be among the first human settlements in Italy.

There is evidence that people were living here as early as the year 7000 BC.

The Sassi are houses dug into the calcarenitic rock itself, which is characteristic of Basilicata and Apulia, locally called "tufo", though it is neither volcanic tuff, nor tufa limestone.

The term sasso derives from Latin saxum, meaning a hill, rock or great stone.

In the 1950s, the government of Italy forcefully relocated most of the population of the Sassi to areas of the developing modern city.

Matera is the only place in the world where people can boast to be still living in the same houses of their ancestors of 9,000 years ago.

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