Giro Jot del Giorno - Stage 6 - 10/8/2020

The Sassi di Matera, the limestone cliffs in the canyons of Matera, feature in Stage 6 and 7 of the Giro.

The charm of watching a Grand Tour for three weeks is seeing all the tourist destinations along the routes from the air in France, Italy, and Spain. The majority of these notable locations are ruins or preserved structures that are hundreds or thousands of years old. In Spain and France, we still see the remnants of the Roman occupation, like aqueducts or coliseums. Italy is different, because it is literally the cradle of Western Civilization. The ruins in Italy date from the ancient Greeks all through the Renaissance and wars of unification under Garibaldi. Matera is a special example of Italian history because it is the oldest continuously inhabited area from the ancient Greeks, Romans, Longobards, Byzantines, Saracens, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, and Bourbons.