What to do in Matera – City Tour
Enjoy a city tour in Matera
Exploring the unique 'sassi' with a local guide
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Style Private tour
Setting Picturesque city
Price from €180/2 hour
Why choose this tour to discover the unthinkable
Hire an official local guide to discover spectacular Matera, the 3rd oldest city in the world after Aleppo in Syria and Jericho in West Bank. Famous for its old center, known as the Sassi, abandoned after the 1960 and now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The visit is a must! The barren landscape that surrounds Matera has a biblical quality and has been used as the setting for ancient Jerusalem by a number of filmmakers. Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ was shot here.
Hill-top Matera has a beautiful aristocratic center in the upper part with lines of baroque white buildings, churches, and beautiful squares.
In contrast, the part of the city along the gorge consists of myriads of dank dwellings with no natural light, ventilation, running water, or electricity where people and animals used to live together under the constant risk of malaria, cholera, and typhoid. Almost 70 years ago - in 1952 - some 15,000 people, mostly peasants, and farmers, were relocated to the new residential area, and the 'Sassi' were abandoned until the area was declared Unesco World Heritage Site in 1993. From then, the city started a huge turnaround and from squalor and poverty, it has become today a hip hub and the 'European Capital of Culture 2019'.
A typical tour of the Sassi consists of a 2 hours exploration around the pedestrian tiny streets which climb the gorge, visiting an example of a frescoed church and the 'casa grotto' until the Cathedral.
Then, after a traditional lunch, it is possible to visit some of the beautiful rupestrian churches dotted along the countryside of the Murgia Archaeological National Park.
The price for the private 2h tour starts from 180 euro to visit the Sassi (2 people) and arrives at 360 euro (4h tour) to visit also the Murgia National Park. Please consider that the tickets to enter the frescoed church (3 euro), the casa grotto (2 euro), and the taxi to reach the park if you do not have your own car (40 euro) are not included.
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