An alternative to Matera: 7 cities of stone and sassi in the South to discover

Matera has become a must-see by now: the Sassi have conquered UNESCO, the cinema and millions of visitors, to the point that in high season the Gravina is walked in single file. But the limestone, the carved tufa and the villages clinging to the badlands are not a Matera exclusive. Across Basilicata and Apulia there are many cities built of the same material — soft rock, inhabited caves, vertical lanes — where the experience is more intimate and the tickets less costly. If you're after an alternative to Matera that gives you back the same geological wonder without the crush, start with these destinations.

The tufa cities

The first stop is some fifty kilometres from Matera, across the Apulian border. In Gravina in Puglia the town looks out over a deep canyon and its two oldest quarters, Piaggio and Fondovito, are carved into the calcarenite — the same "tufa" as the Sassi. It's worth going down into the Fondovito quarter, where the rock church of San Michele delle Grotte is carved from a single block of rock with fourteen pillars and five naves: this is where Gravina was born, even before it rose to the surface. Those wanting to delve into the underground will also find the rock crypts and tunnels beneath the town.

Back in Basilicata, the stone becomes mountain. Castelmezzano is wedged among the sandstone spires of the Lucanian Dolomites: the grey houses seem to grow from the rock itself and the steps carved into the stone, the so-called "Norman staircase", climb up to the castle's remains. It's proof that the fusional bond between settlement and rock, which at Matera you admire horizontally, here rises vertically in spectacular fashion. Nearby, the twin village of Pietrapertosa (not on our site) completes the picture with its "angel's flight" zipline.

Suspended villages

For the same atmosphere of abandonment the Sassi had before restoration, the reference point is Craco, the clay village suspended over the badlands. Evacuated after the landslides of the twentieth century, today it's visited with a helmet and guide: an entire town of emptied stone houses, the set of numerous films, where you grasp how fragile the balance is between construction and the clayey ground of the South. It's the most cinematic and the rawest alternative.

To the south, towards the Ionian, Arab rule left a unique quarter. Tursi and its Rabatana rise on a spur ringed by ravines: the name comes from the Arabic rabad, "fortified village", and the tangle of lanes, arches and stairways preserves cave-houses and tunnels carved into the rock face. The church of Santa Maria Maggiore holds a sixteenth-century stone nativity scene and Renaissance frescoes. Together with Pietrapertosa and Tricarico, the Rabatana is a UNESCO candidate: a good reason to get there before mass tourism does too.

Staying on the badlands, Aliano is the village where Carlo Levi was exiled, recounted in "Christ Stopped at Eboli". The white houses facing the clay ridges and the lunar landscape surrounding them offer the same sense of suspension as the Sassi, but with a literary density few places have. It's less scenic than Matera and, precisely for that, more authentic.

The sacred rock

The stone of the South isn't only houses: it's also faith carved into the rock. Near Matera, the Crypt of Original Sin is called "the rock-cut Sistine Chapel" for the early-medieval frescoes that cover its walls: a cave-church that alone is worth the journey. Further south, in Salento, the Crypt of the Crucifix at Ugento repeats on a small scale the same miracle of a sanctuary entirely hewn from the rock.

If the stone you're after is Romanesque instead, stop at Bovino, a Daunian village in the Monti della Daunia: the cathedral, the bridge over the Cervaro and the lanes tell centuries through the same pale stone. And for those wanting to pair the mineral charm with the sea, Civita di Maratea is the ancient stone core suspended above the Tyrrhenian, far from the chaos of the coast.

Returning to Matera

One last piece of advice: if Matera remains an irresistible desire, try going off-season and staying in the Sasso Caveoso, the quieter side, where the neighbourhoods still tell the life of times past. Often the best alternative to Matera is a different Matera — slower, emptier, truer. And once you've seen it like that, the stone villages above will feel like the natural continuation of the same journey into the rock of the South.

Practical guides

• How to Get to Matera: All Transport Options
• Two Days in Matera: Descending into the World's Oldest City
• Where to Stay in Matera: Sleeping in Stone Among the Sassi and the Murgia
• Where to Eat in Matera: Bread, Stone and Lucanian Flavours