Secret Europe: A guide to the other great cities of Italy

Venice, Florence and Rome may get the lion's share of tourists' attention, but venture south and you'll find these three equally enchanting cities.

With homes, shops and churches stacked up the tufa cliffs, or burrowed deep into them, Matera is one of Italy's most extraordinary cities. Known as "sassi", Matera's cave dwellings, dating from the paleolithic era, are believed to be the oldest continuously inhabited homes in the world, lived in until the 1950s, when the population, all living in poverty, relocated to government housing.

In the 1980s however, former sassi-dwellers or their descendants started to return, restoring homes and establishing cafes, hotels and restaurants in the caves.

In 1993, UNESCO listed the sassi as a World Heritage site and today the city, situated on the calcarenite plateau of Murgia, with ravines and hills honeycombed with more than a thousand dwellings, shops, galleries and churches, is thrumming with life, thanks to new and returned locals and curious (and well-heeled) travellers. A stay in a cave hotel (in a far more salubrious manner than their former inhabitants) is an essential part of the experience.

Enclosed within 16th-century walls accessed through one of three arched stone portals, Lecce, known as "The Florence of The South" is a baroque fantasy, a city filled with ornate churches and palazzi built from honey-hued local limestone that changes colour according to the time of day. Largely pedestrian, the ancient centre's a place for strolling - taking time to admire the elaborate wooden doorways, intricately carved facades and lintels of houses, restaurants and shops and stopping at an enoteca for a glass of primitivo or lunch in a picturesque piazza. In the long, warm summer evenings you can take in a concert in the well-preserved Roman amphitheatre.

Like Florence, Lecce has scores of churches, including Santa Chiara, with a unique papier-mâché ceiling, while the Duomo in the main square, has a facade crowded with grinning grotesques, cherubs and saints.

Widely considered to be one of the most beautiful cities in Italy and a protected UNESCO heritage site, seafaring Siracusa has a strong Greek and Roman heritage. Lovers of history will be handsomely rewarded for a few hours spent at the Neapolis Archeological Park exploring the spectacular 5th century BCE Greek theatre, a Roman amphitheatre where gladiator battles once took place and "the ear of Dionysius", an ear-shaped limestone cave with incredible acoustic properties.

Base yourself in spectacular, baroque Ortigia, Siracusa's historic heart, a maze of pedestrian streets and piazze on a small island connected by a bridge.

Ortigia's duomo on the piazza of the same name was built in the 7th century and is one of Europe's oldest and perhaps most evocative churches. It was constructed over the 5th century BCE "Temple of Athena," and encompasses the original fluted columns.

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