Today Dave, his son Jay and I travelled a bit south to the town of Matera. The area has been settled since Paleolithic times with peoples digging caves into the calcareous rock characteristic of the region. The Romans allegedly founded what is now considered the city in third century BC. Inhabitants to the area can lay claim to living in the same houses occupied over nine-thousand years ago. To say there is a few thousand years of history here is an understatement. Over the many thousands of years the inhabitants of the area have dug and quarried and built upon the previous generations’ construction until now you discover a town of rock that seems more grown out of than built upon the hillside. And for those who love trivia, many movies including maybe most famously Mel Gibson’s Passion of Christ was filmed here due to its resemblance to ancient Jerusalem.
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