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The sun is sinking over Matera , a small city in Italy 's southern region of Basilicata . You stand where the modern town stops abruptly above the Gravina ravine . Below you , the Sasso Caveoso spills down the slope . It is one of two ancient quarters called the Sassi , a name that means the stones . Walk down worn steps polished smooth by generations of feet . People have lived in caves here since the Paleolithic era . Matera is among the oldest continuously inhabited settlements in the world . Each home is a cave dug deeper into the soft limestone as families grew . Life in the cave homes was intimate and often desperate . Families shared a common courtyard where neighbors drew water and raised children together . By the 1940s , many caves sheltered families and animals side by side . They had no electricity or running water , and disease spread easily . In 1945 , Carlo Levi 's memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli made the misery of the Sassi a national scandal . In 1952 , a special law ordered the evacuation . About 15,000 residents gradually moved to new housing above . The emptied caves stood dark and silent for decades . The rebirth came slowly , cave by cave . People returned in the 1980s . In 1993 , UNESCO named the Sassi and the park of rock churches a World Heritage site . More than 150 of them , carved by monks and hermits , dot the ravine around the city . Restaurants and small hotels now glow inside rooms where mules once slept . In 2019 , the city that Italy once called its shame served as European Capital of Culture . Reach the bottom of the lane as the light turns gold . Here the roof of one house is the floor of the street above , and voices drift across a shared courtyard . The sun drops behind the ravine , and the stone city glows like a lamp .
