Gravina in Puglia

Until 1863 it was called simply Gravina: the «in Puglia» was added by newly united Italy, to tell it from its namesakes. The name is that of the torrent which cut the canyon beside it, and from there comes the name of all the gravine of the Murgia. The set piece is that ravine itself, spanned by the seventeenth-century aqueduct bridge made famous around the world by the chase in No Time to Die, the 007 film shot here in 2019. Beneath the town runs another town: cellars, rock-cut churches and the tunnels of underground Gravina.

It is the twenty-second comune in Italy by area, and the Alta Murgia national park has its seat in its territory: a plateau of farmsteads and drove roads, with the Difesa Grande wood covering two thousand hectares on its own, and karst chasms like the Pulicchio and the very deep Grave di Faraualla. In the countryside towards Matera there is even a mud volcano, recently formed. The bread of Gravina, the red chickpea and the cardoncello mushrooms are the table; the fair of Saint George, held since the thirteenth century, is among the oldest in Italy. The title of city came only on the twenty-fourth of February 2025, by decree of the President of the Republic.