"We relied heavily on the view that was there. In fact, the first time I saw her, I lost my head, because it was just perfect." So Mel Gibson talks about his choice for the set of the movie "The Passion of the Christ". Matera was undoubtedly the ideal Jerusalem for the famous blockbuster. An invisible door of time seems to have preserved it over the centuries until it get to us as an incredible rock settlement, comparable only to the region of Cappadocia in Turkey. The whole housing system is perched on the slopes of the Gravina, a huge valley with extremely unique natural features, and is composed by houses and extraordinary cavernous mazes. Caves, entrenched villages, farm houses engraved into stone, painted churches: you will be inevitably enchanted by this amazing city carved in the calcarenitic rock.