It’s now undergoing something of a renaissance with a slew of stylish hotels and restaurants. In 1993 the town was granted UNESCO World Heritage status as 'the most outstanding, intact example of a troglodyte settlement in the Mediterranean region”. It wasn’t until the 1980s that a few residents began to move back and renovate the old cave houses. Nearly 15,000 residents were moved to more modern accommodation. Although façades and roofs were added, the interiors remained virtually unchanged until, in 1952, unhealthy conditions prompted the Italian government to declare the sassi uninhabitable. What look like normal houses are in fact windowless grottoes with earth floors, where families once slept alongside their animals. Matera is an ancient city of cave-houses (known as sassi), dug from the soft volcanic tufa rock. The Last Supper was filmed at the rock church of San Nicola dei Greci, and the procession of the cross on the steep alleys of the abandoned older section, Sasso Caveoso. Wider vistas, including the crucifixion, were filmed around the city of Matera, in the remote southern region of Basilicata, down in the ‘heel’ of Italy’s ‘boot’. Most of the film was shot on the backlot at Cinecitta studios in Rome.

Mel Gibson's account of the last hours of the life of Christ adds little to the Bible-in-pictures genre of the Fifties other than the Aramaic language and emotionally bludgeoning physical detail. The Passion of the Christ filming location: Matera, Italy | Photograph: iStockphoto / Claudio Colombo

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