Murgecchia

A unique viewpoint over the Sassi di Matera

The Sassi di Matera are a wonder to behold from any vantage point, but there is a spot on the outskirts of the town from which you can enjoy a truly breathtaking panorama. It is the Murgecchia, or Little Murgia, the northern part of the large plateau in which rocky environments dotted with small caves and areas used in the past to extract tuff are now transformed into an open-air museum of industrial archaeology. 

And then there is Murgecchia’s Neolithic Village, a series of entrenched Neolithic villages that still today represent how these prehistoric peoples were able to take advantage of the land to build housing and defence structures. Here, thanks to remains unearthed since the late 19th century, scholars have been able to reconstruct how Neolithic peoples lived in this area, which was once ideal for agriculture and animal husbandry to the point that prehistoric communities abandoned nomadism in favour of a much more stable state of settled life.