Matera: The Cave City

There are cavemen in Italy, thousands of them. Cavewomen, too. They're the people of la civiltà rupestre, a "cliff civilization" that inhabits the instep of Italy's boot. For millennia, they carved cities directly into ravines and gullies made of tufa, a soft, porous stone that's easily cut and molded, then quickly hardens upon exposure to the air.

These days, the people of la civiltà rupestre have slapped front-room facades onto their cave entrances, turning the tightly packed city centers into jumbles of houses stacked willy-nilly atop one another. Despite the squared-off front rooms, satellite dishes, and a few other signs of modern life, the homes inside are bona fide caverns.

When Italy drew up its regional boundaries 140 years ago, Apulia's border sliced through this ancient culture. Most cave cities are in Apulia, including Ginosa, Massafra, and Móttola. But Matera, the most dramatic, lies five miles across the border in Basilicata.

Up through the World War II era, some 15,000 people lived without electricity or running water in cave homes in Matera, a city built into two parallel ravines separated by a high ridge. In the 1950s, the population was relocated en masse to a modern town on a plateau, just above the ravines. The old town, abandoned by all save a handful of the most destitute squatters--who caught rainwater in discarded washing machines and planted meager gardens in old bathtubs--became known as La Città Fantasma.

The Phantom City has risen from the dead: Revitalization efforts over the past decade have brought electricity, plumbing, and, slowly, the people into the old cave neighborhoods, known as i sassi ("the rocks"). In 1998, Raffaele and Carmela Cristallo bought a string of homes in the part of town known as Sasso Barisano and converted them into the Hotel Sassi. You can't go wrong with any of the 22 rooms, even if only three are full-fledged caves. Most have at least one wall of raw, honey-colored bedrock. The rooms with only modern walls have balconies blessed with panoramas of the Barisano, a particularly romantic setting at night, when warm yellow floodlights shine on the city.

Another entrepreneurial pair, Umberto Giasi and Eustachio Persia, took a vast cavern underneath the modern town, slapped the rough walls with whitewash, and started serving pizza and Apulian dishes to hungry crowds. They called the joint Il Terrazzino because of its narrow terrace with views of the Barisano.

Over the ridge from Sasso Barisano is Sasso Caveoso, the more rugged and untouched of the two cave-riddled ravines. When fixing up the sassi, Matera's town fathers left the far southeast end of the Sasso Caveoso alone. This decision paid off in 2003:  Mel Gibson chose Matera--and this neighborhood in particular--as the perfect stand-in for ancient Jerusalem in The Passion of the Christ. Many people spend an entire day wandering the Caveoso, in part because they keep getting lost in the maze of alleys, stairs, dead ends, and blind courtyards. 

The cave churches scattered throughout the neighborhood are a big draw. Ten years ago, you needed to find someone with the keys and a flashlight for a look at the complex of a half-dozen churches known as the Convicino di San Antonio. These days the doors are thrown open and there are wooden walkways to guide you through the tiny, interlinked chapels. It's still an eerie experience--you walk down steep tunnels into dark, cramped sanctuaries. In the chambers above, sunlight streams through windows bored through the rock, revealing delicate medieval frescoes.

Even more dramatic is the church of Santa Maria de Idris, carved into a huge rock pinnacle jutting from the lip of a gorge. Cave homes barnacle the lower reaches of the pinnacle, and a broad staircase continues above them to a terrace in front of the blank masonry facade of the church. Inside is an assortment of caves, spooky tunnels, and paintings on the rough tufa walls.

Lecce: Arts, crafts, and Baroque quirks

Lecce is a town of traditional craftsmen and virtuoso chefs, and its university lends the place a youthful, cultural edge that's missing from other Apulian cities. In the evening, throngs stroll past baroque churches and palazzi, crowd the sidewalk tables that spill out of every café, and pass the time in animated conversation until the 9 p.m. dinner hour.