Sassi di Matera: 1993, 1952, and the ZTL now

The Sassi of Matera have been on the UNESCO World Heritage list since 1993, and the districts you walk through were legally emptied under a law of May 17, 1952.

1993, and 1,016 hectares

The listing covers the Sassi and the park of the rock churches of Matera, inscribed in 1993 under cultural criteria iii, iv and v, with a core zone of 1,016¹ hectares and a buffer zone of 4,365¹ hectares, reference 670¹.

Note what the name contains. The listing is not only the two cave districts inside the city: it takes in the ravine and the rock churches on the far side, which is why the buffer zone is four times the core.

A note on sourcing: whc.unesco.org returns 403¹ to every automated request, so the areas and criteria here come from the Italian culture ministry's UNESCO office.

Law 619 of May 17, 1952

Law 619² of May 17, 1952, titled Rehabilitation of the Sassi districts in the town of Matera, imposed the clearing of dwellings declared uninhabitable and funded the move of their inhabitants.

Article 7 governs how a dwelling is declared uninhabitable and sets the deadlines, fixed by the mayor, for leaving it. Article 14 let people buy their new homes on 35-year instalments.

The consequence ran for decades: the Sassi were progressively emptied, and only started to be lived in again from the 1980s.

700 million and 4,500 million lire

The law put 700² million lire behind expropriations and public works for 1951 to 1955, and 4,500² million lire behind public housing for 1951 to 1957.

The ratio between those two figures is the policy in one line. Six and a half times more money went to building somewhere else than to touching the Sassi themselves.

That is the fact behind the new districts on the plateau above, which most visitors never see and which are the other half of the story.

The number that is not in the law

1 figure repeated everywhere does not appear in the legal text: the 17,000² people said to have been moved, two thirds of the city.

It circulates in the press and on general sites. It is not in law 619² and it is not recorded here as fact. The law text was read in full, though on a private legal publisher rather than on Normattiva.

The ZTL: yellow, blue, green

The yellow zone covering the Sassi is restricted every day from 10 am to 1 pm and 5 pm to 9:30 pm. The blue zone around the Duomo and San Biagio is closed 24 hours a day. The historic center has a green zone with 3 sub-areas, Mercato, Prefettura and Centro, on seasonal timetables.

Loading and unloading in the urban pedestrian areas is allowed 7 am to 10 am and 2 pm to 6 pm, holidays excluded. Exemptions cover authorized residents, emergency vehicles, disability permit holders, electric vehicles and taxis, depending on the zone.

The base rule is municipal ordinance 291³ of August 27, 2014.

Check the ordinances before you drive

1 warning from the data itself: the municipal open data record was updated on August 9, 2026, but the KML and GeoJSON boundary files still date from 2014, and the city issues supplementary ordinances on the Sassi regularly.

So treat the times above as the standing rule and the albo pretorio as the current one. A ZTL fine in Italy can reach you at home months later, with the rental company's admin fee arriving first.

If your accommodation is inside the zone, ask the owner to register your plate before you arrive, not after. For the region, see Basilicata.

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