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Zungri is a small agricultural centre in the Vibonese hinterland. Located on the Poro plateau, it takes its name from the Greek tsounkrì, which means hill or height.
The territory boasts an ancient rock settlement, called the "Sbariati", or the stragglers, because on those heights the population was forced to flee from the Arab raids of the Byzantine and Norman periods.
According to archaeological evidence, the site dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries, but scholars believe it has been inhabited since prehistoric times.
"The City of Stone", as it has been renamed in recent times, counts a massive number of houses (one hundred) carved into the sandstonerock, and extends for a total of three square kilometres on the ridges leading to the bed of the Malopera torrent, in an area named Fossi.
A unique feature of the centre is the capillary work of canalisation aimed at storing rainwater in order to avoid fatal flooding for the population.
The caves, real houses with doors, windows and beds, bring us back to a past time, when the slow pace of life was marked by small daily gestures of survival and care of the body and spirit. The entire site emanates a centuries-old energy enclosed in the sculpted walls and the springs adorned by maidenhair ferns, giving the visitor the keys to a mystical and mysterious world that is inaccessible in modern everyday life.
Near the settlement, there is also the Museum of Rupestrian and Peasant Civilisation, within which you can admire numerous objects of common use belonging to the local population in the 19th and 20th centuries.
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