The town of MATERA itself is unique, with a degree of culture and elegance unusual by southern standards and, in its sassi - dwellings dug out of the ravine in tiers - one of the country's oddest urban features. The sassi are mainly abandoned now, an eerie troglodyte enclave occupying the lower regions of the city. But until thirty years ago this part of the city was still populated by the poorest of the materani . <... [More]