Mottola's rock heritage is well-known to tourists thanks to the successful definition "grotte di Dio", which was first used in 1987 in an article in the magazine Bell'Italia dedicated to the main rupestrian churches of Mottola.

In the medieval villages carved out in central Puglia, as in all human communities, there are temples, naturally also rupestrian, in which the manifestations of faith, devotion, and sacred art of those populations were consumed for several centuries. The walls of the "grotte di Dio" have thus been covered with paintings and frescoes, especially from the Norman conquest. As a result, many of the rupestrian churches in Mottola are richly frescoed. Thanks to their sacred decorations, which have fortunately come down to us, they currently constitute the most well-known, promoted, and appreciated testimonies of our medieval troglodytic affair.

Despite their important testimony in the history of art, it should not be forgotten that the most innovative and interesting choice of our medieval ancestors, more than a thousand years ago, was not the excavation and decoration of the rupestrian temples, but the desire to "live in the cave", for the many advantages that this entailed in that historical, economic, environmental, and climatic context.

Even if the models of the hypogean churches and basilicas most of the time imitated those of the built temples, the peculiarity of the "rupestri architecture" is evident, due to the limitations and constraints connected to the excavation. On the other hand, as far as sacred art is concerned, these churches do not offer us testimonies of a particular "rupestri art". In reality, on the rock walls of the churches carved in tuff, the same artistic and devotional expressions were depicted, typical of popular religiosity in the Apulian and Lucanian Middle Ages, which were found in the mural frescoes and in the icons of the sub divo churches.

Therefore, the most important element is constituted by their precious custody of those testimonies of architecture and sacred art. The "grotte di Dio" have faithfully preserved and handed down the artistic and devotional heritage of the Middle Ages, unlike most of the churches that were "built" in the same period. Many of the latter, over the centuries, have been destroyed, dissolving their artistic and devotional message in the collapse. Those that have remained intact, have most of the time recorded subsequent adaptations, such as the superposition of architectural superfluities and layers of paintings on the primitive medieval decoration, which have altered and distorted their original characteristics.

Instead, thanks to the eternity of the cave, which almost never collapses, and to the reduction of the anthropization of the hypogean settlements, generally abandoned from the 14th century, the rupestrian churches of the "diffused museum" of Mottola represent today an intact, fascinating, and surprising pinacotheca of medieval sacred art, hosted by environmental contexts, such as gravine and lame, of exceptional environmental and landscape character.

Their gallery of sacred images synthesizes the culture and the production of popular sacred painting, in a time span that ranges from the second Byzantine colonization to the dawn of the Renaissance. The paintings are largely marked by Byzantine expression, which remained predominant in these lands for several centuries even after the political expulsion of Byzantium. They read the contributions of the various regional schools, Cypriot, Greek, Cappadocian, Palestinian, Balkan, which came to us through the Mediterranean, as well as the influences coming from the Latin school border areas, such as Campania and Lazio.

On the walls of the "grotte di Dio" we thus find mainly iconic and hagiographic representations of Saints and Christ, in Pantocrators and in Deesis. These paintings in the rupestrian churches and their symbolic equipment acted as a link between the human being and the divine being, fulfilling a function that was both devotional and didactic. On the one hand, they allowed contemplation, prayer, and votive offerings, on the other hand, they provided the faithful with a real theological and moral teaching.

The territory of Mottola had over thirty rupestrian churches, some of which unfortunately have been destroyed. The city's municipal administration has purchased over the past decades the most important and significant ones, for history and art history, which are currently open to guided tours.