Matera. An ancient city named for Mother Earth, where nature and architecture entangle in a towering spiral of winding stairways and caverns.  Where cobbled paths fold in on one another like a living Escher concept, twisting along steep inclines through carved archways, and past weathered wooden doors.  Smoke escapes the chimneys of cave residences and rises as though the streets were breathing.  The smell of incense permeates the air, floating from any number of the dozens of churches tucked into the rocky landscape.  As twilight falls, lights glimmer from every darkened window like a kaleidoscope of starlight, mirroring the expanse of the night sky above.  Every surface is stone--and each stone holds a story, from a moment in the timeline of the second-oldest inhabited place in Europe.