Tourists flock to its neighbour, but most miss this beautiful town

On any given summer day in southern Italy, the town of Matera can feel under siege from tourism.

With its cave homes chipped into the bare slopes of a ravine along the Gravina River, the Basilicata town has an undeniable beauty that’s resulted in visitor numbers skyrocketing over the past two decades. It’s also drawn filmmakers to cast Matera in movies such as Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ and the 2021 James Bond film, No Time to Die.

But as all that unfolds on a typical southern Italian summer day, I’m a 30-minute drive upstream along the Gravina, in the river’s namesake town of Gravina in Puglia.

Like Matera, Gravina in Puglia stretches along the slopes of a ravine that’s punctured with caves that served as ancient dwellings. But this town where Pope Benedict XIII was born in the 17th century differs from Matera in two crucial ways: the cave homes in the oldest part of town remain largely derelict; and the day I’m here, there’s just a handful rather than a horde of visitors strolling its streets and the bridge that seems to hold everything together.

Spend a few hours wandering its lanes and the ravine, and Gravina begins to feel like the raw blueprint for Matera. Look up from the Rupestre San Michele delle Grotte church, at the base of the oldest part of town, and the buildings even look a bit like Matera’s facades.

But beyond the comparisons, Gravina has its own distinct beauty, as evidenced by its status as one of 14 Puglia towns on Italy’s Borghi piu belli d’Italia, a list of the country’s most beautiful villages.

Inside its old town, piazzas are stitched together by labyrinthine lanes. Green window shutters brighten the stone homes, and washing hangs perpetually from balconies. It looks so timelessly Italian, and yet Gravina’s old town feels almost new in comparison to the traces of ancient life along the banks of the ravine.

From the old town and its soaring cathedral, lanes filter down into the ravine with its rocky slopes bridged by the Ponte Acquedotto. The 18th century bridge, Gravina’s emblematic feature, stretches 90 metres from bank to bank, and is a bridge in two parts – road above and, among the high arches below, an aqueduct.

Like Matera, this bridge has had its time in the movie spotlight. Though many of the action scenes for No Time to Die were filmed in Matera, the Ponte Acquedotto staged one of the movie’s most memorable stunts, when Bond leaped over its parapet as gunmen closed in from either side. Pinocchio also strolled across the bridge in Roberto Benigni’s 2019 remake of the children’s classic.

From down by the bridge, the ravine is lined with caves and rock-cut churches, most prominently the Chiesa Rupestre Madonna della Stella. A line of columns still stands sentinel across the open entrance of the 15th century cave church, and its bell tower rises detached from the top of the ravine above.

At some point centuries ago, Gravina’s cave dwellers decided they’d be better off living above ground, sending them up the slopes and into homes. To build these houses, they cut out rock, creating a second series of tunnels, caves and cisterns beneath the town that were, in turn, used for storing food, wine and rainwater.

Visitors can delve into this subterranean network on 90-minute Gravina Sotterranea tours, rummaging beneath the town and seemingly back to its origins.

Back above ground and, like Matera, Gravina’s entire town often feels like a veneer, its stone facades built over the holes within and the streets blissfully empty. But as evening falls, the town is transformed, its piazzas, restaurants and bars filling with locals, and music pouring long into the night from a courtyard cafe, as though life only begins at 10pm.

It’s almost as if the town is still living its troglodytic ways, its residents emerging nocturnally from their burrows. I find a seat on the steps of a church and watch Gravina swirl around me. It’s Matera but it’s more.

THE DETAILS

Getting there
Bari is the nearest major centre to Gravina. Qatar Airways flies from Sydney and Melbourne to Rome via Doha, with connections via partner airlines to Bari. Regional trains from Bari to Gravina take about 90 minutes. See qatarairways.com

Tour
Gravina Sotterranea tours run twice daily, on weekends only. See www.gravinasotterranea.it

Stay
Steps from the main piazza, Fondo Vito is a fully restored traditional Gravina home immediately above the oldest part of town. From $115 a night. See fondo-vito.it

The writer travelled at his own expense.

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