The "Sassi" are houses dug into the tuff rock typical of Puglia and Basilicata. Many of these "houses" are really only caverns. During the 1950s, the government relocated most of the population of the Sassi to the modern city of Matera. People still live in the Sassi today, however. Until the late 1980s this was considered an area of poverty, since these houses are mostly unlivable.
Current local administration, becoming more tourism-oriented, has helped the "Sassi" to become more livable and attractive. There is a great similarity in the look of the Sassi with that of ancient sites in and around Jerusalem, which are as ancient, and for this reason was chosen by film makers as the setting for ancient Jerusalem, more specifically by Pier Paolo Pasolini in "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" (1964), Bruce Beresford in "King David" (1985) and Mel Gibson in "The Passion of the Christ" (2004).
A memorable chapter on Matera, describing the really poor life of people in the south of Italy at the beginning of the twentieth century, is in the book "Cristo si è fermato a Eboli" (Christ stopped at Eboli) by Carlo Levi.