Gravina di Matera & Bat Cave Excursion: Nature and History

Highlights

• Duration and Transport
• Sites to Explore
• Natural Landscapes

What's included

Itinerary

1. 1

   Stop 1

   1h

   This ravine of karst origin and carved over time by its torrent extends for almost 20 kilometres, from the foot of the city of Matera, made famous for its Sassi (houses dug into the calcarenite and used for millennia by the locals) and declared a world heritage site by UNESCO. The ravine rich in caves, once strategically inhabited by the local population, flows southwards and touches the town of Montescaglioso, then flows into the Bradano river and finally flows into the Ionian Sea. We will go up the path of the stream along the ridge of one side of the ravine, enjoying the landscapes of the Murgia Materana Regional Park.

2. 2

   Stop 2

   1h

   The journey continues and reaches the rock church of San Nicola all'Ofra, a farmhouse with its rooms dug into the cliff that communicate with each other: tunnels, stairways, cisterns, churches, frescoes, developing on 3 levels of height. The cluster of caves overlooks the ravine of Matera and the stream that crosses it. A very suggestive place, in a breathtaking landscape, where the steep rocky walls also represent the typical habitat for the rare black stork, a wonderful bird at risk of extinction, which for some years has sensationally returned to nesting in the Lucanian territory.

3. 3

   Stop 3

   1h

   A complex of karst caves composed of large entrances and long, narrow tunnels, an important breeding site for fascinating flying mammals. In this place where research had already previously been carried out to find the legendary treasure of King Barbarossa, in the 19th century the local archaeologist Domenico Ridola found Paleolithic tools, ceramics, tombs with skeletons and fossils of extinct animals: such as the ancient ox and the 'cave bear. Today exhibited in the Domenico Ridola National Archaeological Museum of Matera:

Before you go