Our first full day in Southern Italy was spent touring the town of Matera. Matera is an hours drive from Bitonto. A curiosity of the Italian mindset, Maria's family couldn't believe we were going to travel "the great distance" of one hour to see Matera. This distance was nothing to us.
Matera is an ancient city and the area has been continuously inhabited since the 10th millennium BC (palaeolithic). It is known for the "sassi" which is an ancient neighbourhood of homes carved into the rock. Due to the ancient nature of the city it has been used often in films to represent ancient Jerusalem (Passion of the Christ, Ben-Hur, and many more). The sassi of Matera are a World Heritage Site.
As was our touring style for much of the trip we arrived and just walked around to see where our feet would take us.
I really enjoyed Matera, it was entirely different from anywhere else I had ever been in the past.
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| Can you see the caves in the hillside? |
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| Note the crosses on the top of the cliff on the far right. We were told they were left after the filming of The Passion of the Christ. |
After Matera, I mentioned an ancient Greek temple that was about thirty minutes south of our location. Since we had time Dad and Maria agreed that we would go find it. Finding it turned out to be a bit more challenging than we thought as the road signs were not great and we drove past the turnoff for the temple several times. We did eventually find it though and we were the only people there. It appeared as though the site is no longer maintained. It is almost funny that Italy has such a large amount of ancient ruins that these ruins were considered no longer important to maintain.
The Palatine Tables - a temple dedicated to Hera.
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