Castellaneta rises above an edge that emerges from one of the deepest ravines of the Murge, at 245 meters above sea level. It is located in the heart of the area that constitutes the Gravine Regional Park and occupies a central position in the western part of the province of Taranto.
The Gravina di Castellaneta or Gravina Grande surrounds the ancient village and it is one of the largest and most spectacular ravines in Puglia. It extends for ten kilometers with various loops, deep at its maximum point 145 meters and wide up to about 300 meters and along its path there are various historical-archaeological settlements.
The territory of Castellaneta hosts numerous traces of the rock civilization, settlement and construction culture that since prehistoric times exploited, for residential and cultural purposes, the natural cavities of the tufaceous rock, formed above all along the edges of blades and abundant ravines in this karst territory.
The rock habitat had its period of maximum expansion from the end of the ninth century, in the context of the second Byzantine colonization and the intense spread of Italian-Greek monasticism.
And it is at this stage that the rock habitat assumes the dignity of a real civilization.
Karstic valleys and ravines constitute, therefore, as well as important and varied ecosystems, the cradle of a civilization that knew how to make out of the rocky ravines houses, work and worship environments.
