Matera - cultural paradise in the south of Italy

The southern Italian region of Basilicata impresses with its diverse landscape, archaeological sights and Matera, the European Capital of Culture 2019.

Basilicata is often not well known, even to those who know Italy inside out. Quite wrongly, because the region between Campania, Apulia and Calabria is one of the most scenic and varied parts of the Apennine Peninsula. With the Gulf of Taranto and the Gulf of Policastro, Basilicata has coastlines on both the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Seas. It offers steep cliffs, deeply indented bays and hidden grottos in the Gulf of Policastro as well as flat sandy beaches in the Gulf of Taranto in the south-east, which guarantee bathing fun for the whole family.


The inland area, which is criss-crossed by the Apennine mountain range
also boasts striking natural beauty: with surprisingly lush green forests on the fertile lava soil of the now extinct volcano Mont Vulture, for example, diverse flora and fauna, dreamy vineyards and ancient olive groves.


Art lovers will get their money's worth throughout Basilicata.
Impressive architectural testimonies document the region's eventful history, which can still be seen and felt everywhere, especially in the city of Matera - European Capital of Culture 2019. For example, in the form of the Sassi: the closely interlocking cave dwellings are located on the steep tufa slopes of the Gravina Valley and were inhabited until the 1960s.
years. In 1993, they were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List as a thousand-year-old living system.


Don't miss out on a tour of the cave churches.
There are 150 of them and they bear witness to a long tradition of spirituality. With its narrow, winding streets, historic houses and beautiful squares, the town has earned a reputation as the "second Bethlehem".


Due to its similarity to Bethlehem, Matera was the setting for the films "The Passion of the Christ"
by Mel Gibson and "The 1st Gospel according to Matthew" by Pier Paolo Pasolini
have been filmed. As if all this were not enough, Matera's tourist offer in the Capital of Culture year 2019 will be complemented by a dense program of events spanning a total of 48 weeks.
weeks in total.


The series of events will kick off on January 19 with a big festival featuring a total of 54 bands.
From then on, various events will take place every day, many of them simultaneously,
spread across various locations in the city and the region.
A good half of the productions are the result of a creative collaborative process between Basilicata's art scene and a large number of artists, networks and national and European institutions.
and national and European institutions.


The other half of the program is produced in collaboration with the most important Italian and European cultural institutions
- which include the "Fondazione Ravenna Manifestazioni", the San Carlo Theater of Naples, with which an opera will be staged in collaboration
is performed in the Sassi, and the "Biennale di Venezia". Some of these projects will also be implemented with the past and future European Capitals of Culture and with Plovdiv, the Bulgarian city that will share the title of Capital of Culture with Matera in 2019.

www.enit.at www.italia.it www.matera-basilicata2019.it