Matera sits at the edge of a deep ravine in Basilicata, the instep of the Italian boot, and it looks like nowhere else in Europe. Its two ancient districts, the Sassi (literally 'stones'), are a warren of houses, churches, and cisterns carved directly into soft limestone, stacked so tightly that one home's roof is another's street. People have lived here more or less continuously for around 9,000 years, which makes Matera one of the oldest inhabited settlements on the planet.

For much of the 20th century the Sassi were a source of national embarrassment: by the 1950s families shared damp caves with their livestock, and the government forcibly relocated some 15,000 residents to modern housing. The old town emptied out and sat abandoned for decades. Then came a slow, remarkable revival, capped by UNESCO World Heritage status in 1993 and a run as European Capital of Culture in 2019. Today those same caves house design hotels, wine bars, and restaurants.

It is also a film set you may already recognize, doubling for ancient Jerusalem in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ and appearing in the James Bond film No Time to Die. Come for the otherworldly views at dusk, stay for the fierce, frugal Lucanian cooking: orecchiette, peperoni cruschi, and Matera's bronze-crusted bread.