Italian city built into the rocks

I was talking to a friend who is going to the city of Matera, Southern Italy where many of the homes are built into the mountain. Basically sculpted caves, some of which have been occupied for an estimated 9000 years.

That's a long time ago, 9K takes you back to the beginning of agriculture, and certainly before writing existed.

The town is frequently used as a movie backdrop, often as a substitute for Jerusalem. It was used in the Wonder Woman movie.

Has anyone been there?

I have never been to Matera but did stay in some rooms of that style in Thira (Santorini) Greece. Back of the rooms were rounded caves cut right into the side of the cliff a 100' down into the caldera. The estimates for the first people on Thira are usually about 4K BC so 6K years ago. Don't know how old these rooms were given the number of eruptions over the millennia. The caldera was created long before human habitation of the area though.

Quote: kenarman

I have never been to Matera but did stay in some rooms of that style in Thira (Santorini) Greece. Back of the rooms were rounded caves cut right into the side of the cliff a 100' down into the caldera. The estimates for the first people on Thira are usually about 4K BC so 6K years ago. Don't know how old these rooms were given the number of eruptions over the millennia. The caldera was created long before human habitation of the area though.

Matera @ 9000 years is probably twice as old as the homes in Santorini. No other homes in the world can claim to have been inhabited for that long.

The caldera was created for the first time long before human habitation of the area. But the caldera would fill with magma which cooled and formed an island again, only to erupt over and over again. The last caldera to be created was 4600 years ago and the area was already settled. It devastated the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri and communities and agricultural areas on nearby islands and the coast of Crete with a related earthquake or tsunami. There is some evidence that this eruption was the source of the myth of Atlantis.



The only gold artifact every found from the Minoan settlement at Akrotiri.

Yes I knew all that history and visited Akrotiri. It is a very well preserved site with very little excavated yet, like Pompeii it was buried in ash so is mostly intact once chipped out of the hardened ash. No bodies have been found there and that is probably why little gold. It is likely the Minoans had enough warning to evacuate and would have no doubt taken their gold with them.

The magma would slowly build an island in the caldera but the last two at least didn't push sea completely out and left much of the caldera still filled with the ocean. Sitting on the patio of the room I had there several hundred feet above the caldera with my wife, a bottle of wine and cheese and crackers watching the sunset was a bucket list experience.