The Murgia Park

The Natural and Historical Archaeological Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera, also known as the Murgia Materana Park, is a portion of a vast limestone territory characterized by alternating valleys of varying depths and plateaus that wind along the twenty kilometers of the Gravina di Matera, a deep, erosive canyon that flows into the Bradano River towards the Metaponto plain. This karst landscape is rich in natural and man-made caves, boasting a significant archaeological heritage.

The oldest evidence includes caves frequented in prehistoric times during the Middle Paleolithic and Neolithic settlements dating back to the Early Neolithic. But there is also important evidence dating back to more recent periods of both prehistory and protohistory, spanning Magna Graecia, Roman rule, and the entire Middle Ages, the latter period having left over 150 Rupestrian Churches in this area, distributed both in the Sassi and along the valleys of the Gravina di Matera and its tributaries.

The Murgia Materana Park contains a large number of rock-cut villages that characterize its cultural landscape, testifying to human settlements from prehistoric times to the modern age. After the Middle Ages, these rock-cut complexes or farmhouses were primarily used as shelters for animals in pastoral practices.

Besides those mentioned in the more accessible areas of Murgia Timone, Murgecchia, and Contrada Palomba, the most important complexes are located south of the city of Matera, where the park extends to the neighboring municipality of Montescaglioso. To the southeast are the complexes of the Agna district, home to the famous Bat Cave, whose artifacts are exhibited at the Ridola National Museum; the Ofra complex; the Santissimo Crocifisso alla Selva complex (known as Cristo la Selva); the Saracen Village; and the Murgia S. Andrea complexes in the Montescaglioso countryside.

To the south, along the Gravina di Picciano, are many other complexes, such as those of Santa Lucia al Bradano, and especially the Crypt of Original Sin, whose paintings dating back to the Lombard era are of exceptional historical and cultural value.

It is precisely the uninterrupted, millennia-long presence of man in the area that makes Matera a unique city. From a landscape and naturalistic perspective, the Murgia also offers a vast and surprising heritage waiting to be discovered.

The area of ​​the Matera Murgia is now protected by the Natural History Archaeological Park of the Rupestrian Churches of Matera, also known as the Murgia Materana Park. Within this park is the UNESCO World Heritage Site consisting of the Sassi of Matera and the part of the Murgia that lies opposite, beyond the Canyon. This site, recognized as a World Heritage Site in 1993, is of extraordinary importance because for the first time, universal cultural and historical value has been recognized not only for an archaeological site but also for the landscape surrounding it.

A fascinating, wild, and mysterious landscape that still has much to reveal, shaped by the area's long geological history and the incessant work of humanity over the millennia. Matera is likely one of the few places in the world where the history of human evolution is intertwined with the recent geological history of the Murgia region that encompasses it, which began a million years ago.