Italy's Matera in cultural limelight after slum 'shame' European Capital of Culture status has shone a spotlight on Italy's oldest city, whose previous claims to fame were as a cinematic "New Jerusalem" but also its "shameful" slums. Matera, around 9,000 years old and one of the world's longest continuously inhabited cities, after Aleppo and Jericho, on Saturday embarked on a 48-week extravaganza ushering it out of the shadows into the global cultural limelight.