The district is called Sheshi, which in Arbëreshë means square: in the fifteenth century that is where the village of the first Albanian refugees on the Vulture stood, and it was they who cut the first caves into the rock. When the settlement moved to the two tuff hills where Barile sits today, at 664 metres, the caves stayed in use and changed trade: from houses they became wine cellars. There are 131 of them now, side by side along the flank of the hill, and the town council protects them as an urban park.
What to see
This is not a museum. Some of the cellars are abandoned and shut, many others are still working, and inside them people keep Aglianico del Vulture, DOC and DOCG, the wine of this side of the massif. The tuff holds a steady temperature by itself all year round, which is why in five centuries nobody has thought of replacing the caves with a shed.
The second reason the place is known came in 1964, when Pier Paolo Pasolini shot several sequences of "The Gospel According to St Matthew" here. In the cellar belonging to Pasquale Rella, shaped like the inside of a mouth, he filmed the Nativity, with Margherita Caruso as the young Madonna, and other scenes with Enrique Irazoqui, his Christ. The Massacre of the Innocents, the Adoration of the Magi, the Flight of Mary and Joseph into Egypt and the Conspiracy of the Centurions were shot here too.
Visiting
The park takes up the Sheshi quarter, set apart from the built-up town, and you walk it along the front of the caves: from outside you see every one of them, one after another. The interiors, though, are largely still in use, so you go in only if somebody opens up for you. In August the cellars host Cellar Wine & Art, the event that opens them to music, painting, cinema and sculpture alongside Aglianico and the food of the area: that is the moment in the year when most of them can be visited.
Our editors' tip
Ask about Rella's cellar before you start hunting for it: from the street it is a door like all the others, but it is the Nativity one, and the narrow mouth widening inside is exactly what convinced Pasolini to use it. Then look up at the Sheshë ridge behind the cellars: there are caves cut into the tuff up there as well, and some still serve as wine stores.