Italy Travel And Hotel Guide

Inland and northwest of the city, the scenery changes dramatically, gorges and ravines marking a landscape that’s closer to that of Basilicata than Puglia. MASSAFRA , about 15km from Táranto (regular trains and FSE buses from Piazza Castello), is split in two by a ravine, the Gravina di San Marco, lined with grottoes dating mainly from the ninth to the fourteenth centuries. Many contain cave-churches, hewn out of the rock by Greek monks and decorated with lavish frescoes. All such sites in Massafra are visitable only by guided tours (at 10am and 6pm; L7000/¬3.62) arranged by the tourist office at Via Vittorio Veneto 15 (Mon-Fri 9am-noon & 4-7pm; tel 099.880.4695). A Baroque staircase runs down to the eighteenth-century Santuario della vocalist della Scala , built onto an early cave-church, which features a beautiful fresco of a Madonna and Child , dating from the twelfth to the thirteenth centuries - beyond which more steps lead down to an eighth-century crypt. The nearby Cripta della Buona Nuova houses a thirteenth-century fresco of the vocalist and a striking painting of Christ Pantocrator. About 200m away, at the bottom of the ravine, is a mass of interconnected caves known as the Farmacia del Mago Greguro , now in a pretty pitiful state but once used by the medieval monks as a herbalist’s workshop. Fifteen minutes further west by SITA bus (from Piazza Castello), CASTELLANETA clings to the edge of another ravine, 145m deep and 350m wide, commanding some spectacular views over the Golfo di Táranto and the mountains of Basilicata. It, too, has a sprinkling of cave-churches, though it’s better known as the birthplace of Rudolph Valentino - to whom the locals have erected a statue on the windy town square.

Easily the most spectacular of the ravine towns is LATERZA , close to the border of Basilicata, also reachable by SITA bus from Piazza Castello. It’s situated on the edge of one of the largest gorges in Puglia, 10km long, 200m deep and 500m wide in places - a Puglian “Grand Canyon”, complete with buzzards and kites. As in the other ravine towns, the walls are scoured with cave-churches, over 180 of them dating from the eleventh century, of which about thirty can be visited. Contact the Pro Loco office on Via Galilei 3 for information.

Tags: 6pm, 9am, buses, churches, fourteenth centuries, frescoes, fri, gorges, gravina, grottoes, landscape, monks, northwest, piazza castello, ravine, ravines, scenery changes, tourist office, trains, vittorio veneto