Matera and Alberobello Private Day Tour from Rome

It’s one of the most unique and spectacular places in Italy or anywhere in the world.Until the 1950s, Matera was a source of shame for Italy, a place of poverty, malaria and high rates of infant mortality, where people lived in caves without electricity, running water or sewage. Carlo Levi’s book "Christ Stopped at Eboli" raised awareness of the desperate conditions people were living in and about half of the 30,000 population were moved to new homes in the modern part of the city between 1953 and 1968. Matera is located in a remote corner of Southern Italy in the small region Basilicata. It’s not the easiest place to reach which is why it has managed to remain relatively unknown, especially to foreign tourists, although since it became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993 visitor numbers are slowly growing and many of the caves have been transformed into stylish hotels and restaurants. Don't miss to visit Matera!

2. Alberobello is a fascinating place to visit, above all because of the trulli, the traditional dome shaped buildings made from the local stone. Trulli is a word that derives from the Greek "tholos" (trans: "dome"), the typical shape of the buildings. Each whitewashed “trullo” is built without an lime or cement, and has a conical roof on the outside, which is dome shaped inside, and consists of a square central compartment that communicates through arcades with the kitchen and other rooms. The Trulli were strategically built to throw off the government to hide under the law and evade taxes, so they were meant to look like an “uninhabited settlement”. For this reason, the Trulli were built without mortar so they could easily be disassembled quickly if needed. You will see trulli throughout the countryside of the region but there are more in Alberobello than anywhere else (more than 1000) and because of this the town is now a listed UNESCO World Heritage Site.