MATERA
Today we walked for 7 hours !
Aside from Petra, Jordan, Matera is the oldest continuously-inhabited settlement in history. Matera is one of the most interesting, unusual and memorable tourist destinations in Italy. In the remote southern region of Basilicata it is a town famous for its extensive cave-dwelling districts, the Sassi. Matera was the one of the filming locations for Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, with shots showing the Sassi and the gorge below. Chiara had told us that Mel Gibson brought much-needed attention to the town.
Curious visitors can wander the lanes alongside the picturesque cave-filled cliffs, and learn the history of this fascinating place.
The Sassi originated as a prehistoric caveman settlement, and these dwellings are thought to be among the first ever human settlements in what is now Italy. The Sassi are homes dug into rock, which is characteristic of Basilicata and Apulia. Many of them are really little more than caverns, and in some parts of the Sassi a street lies on top of another group of dwellings.
The ancient town grew up on one slope of the rocky ravine created by a river that is now a small stream, and this ravine is known locally as "La Gravina". The caves of Matera had been inhabited for centuries; some humble and some smarter residences, but by the early twentieth-century the area was a by-word for poverty. Until the 1950s hundreds of families were still living crowded into cave-houses here. Matera was a source of shame for Italy, a place of poverty, malaria and high rates of infant mortality, where people lived in caves without electricity, running water or sewage. The squalor and malaria-ridden conditions became a national scandal and finally the cave residents were moved - by law - to modern buildings on the plateau above. Our AirBnB host, Chiara, told us that her Grandmother had once lived in one of the Sassi.
By the 1980s the abandoned caves of Matera were no longer scandalous, but fascinating reminders of the past. A few rather more well-to-do residents moved back and renovated old cave houses. And ever since, Matera has become steadily more popular as an off-the-beaten-track tourist destination. More and more old cave-houses are being converted into comfortable modern dwellings, into hotels, B&Bs, restaurants and pubs.
Tom and I had the opportunity to see what a real peasant dwelling was like before the Sassi were abandoned, when we visited the the "Sasso Caveoso", a typical cave dwelling with furniture and tools of the time. Partly man-made, and partly excavated, its formation can be dated back to the beginning of the 18th century.
The kitchen is fitted with a classic brick cooking area and a copper cauldron heated by wood and two small carbon burners. In the rock walls there are niches and shelves to hold crockery and various kitchen pots.
The back of the dwelling contained a stall for animals, including a mule or a horse, chickens, a pig and other farmyard animals.
We also were able to go inside a cave that was once the storage area for snow, which was collected in the winter and used for water, keeping food cold, and even making gelato in the summer. In addition, there was a cave church that was built in the 8th century. It once contained frescoes, but they have long-since faded.
The city was allegedly founded by the Romans in the 3rd century BC, after the consul Lucius Caecilius Metellus. In AD 664 Matera was conquered by the Lombards. In the 7th and 8th centuries the nearby grottos were colonized by both Benedictine and Basilian monasteries fleeing the persecutions of the Byzantine Empire. The 9th and 10th centuries were characterized by the struggle between the Byzantines and the German emperors. After the settlement of the Normans in Apulia, Matera was ruled by William Iron-Arm from 1043.
After a series of plagues, epidemics, and earthquakes, the city in the 15th century became a French Aragonese possession, and was given in fief to the barons of the Tramontano family. In 1514, however, the population rebelled against the oppression and killed Count Giovanni Carlo Tramontano. In the 17th century Matera was handed over to the Orsini family. Later it was capital of Basilicata, a position it retained until 1806, when Joseph Bonaparte (relative of Napoleon) reassigned it to Potenza.
In 1927 Matera became capital of the province of Matera. On September 21, 1943, the Materani rose against the German occupation, the first Italian city to fight against the Wehrmacht. In 1993 the town was made a UNESCO World Heritage site, for being "the most outstanding, intact example of a caveman settlement in the Mediterranean region, perfectly adapted to its terrain and ecosystem".
The churches of Matera, like the homes, are carved into stone and date back to the Middle Ages; many have their interiors covered in vibrant frescoes. Fascinating and eerie, these churches were unfortunately in not-so-hot shape. While some restorations have taken place, the frescoes remain extremely delicate. (Frescoes are especially sensitive to moisture, so the natural oils from skin damage the artwork). In one church after another, you can see where the frescoes have all but completely disappeared in the parts where people have touched them, such as around door frames.
If you don’t like stairs, you might not like Matera . . . we climbed a lot of them ! To get around, we climbed many stairs. Lots of them. Good thing we had been working out for weeks before our trip ! And forget about handicap accessibility !
We explored the neighborhoods of Sasso Caveoso (it’s a rawer side of town and for us the most fascinating) on foot, roaming through the labyrinth of narrow alleyways, up and down uneven stone staircases, discovering dead ends and tiny courtyards adorned with flower pots, cave churches and expansive views of the sassi. With its bleak location on the edge of a rugged ravine, parched grasses and spiky cacti among the outcrops descending to the trickle of river below, we imagined the struggle of life here just decades ago.
It looked daunting but the walk down into the ravine and the return back up isn’t too difficult and it was very quiet down there, and gives another perspective of the city looming above.
PARCO DELLA MURGIA MATERANA
The Murgia National Park was established in 1990 with the name of Parco Regionale Archeologico Storico Naturale delle Chiese Rupestri del Materano (Natural Historic Archaeological Regional Park of the Rock Churches of the Matera region). It has been included in the UNESCO World heritage List together with the Sassi di Matera; this is the spectacular Italian rocky landscape which best testifies the ancient relationship between man and nature in southern Italy.
The countryside is characterized by a soft rock called "limestone," which played an essential role in the forming of the terrain of cliffs, gorges and caves used by man who settled here since prehistoric times.
The Park is very charming, engulfed by ravines with cultivated areas and some traces of the ancient Mediterranean culture. There are also fortified farms, as well as lively and fascinating paths carved into the rock to collect water in cisterns, wells and water troughs—all evidence of the centuries-old agro-pastoral development.
The construction technique used throughout the region is described as "architecture in negative" . . . not actually building, but removing matter from the rock (by digging), in order to actually obtain architectural structures. That is why the Parco della Murgia includes Palaeolithic caves (Bat Cave), villages dating back to the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages (villages of Murgecchia, Murgia Timone andTrasanello): all pre-historic sites that tell us about human presence mostly made up by shepherds and herdsmen. There are also farms, sometimes fortified, the characteristic sheep enclosures called "jazzi", cisterns, water troughs and wells.
The Murgia National Park is characterised by a varied and wild nature which includes approximately 1,200 botanical species (one sixth of the national flora and a third of the region’s): a remarkable number for an area of about 7000 acres. In this magnificent place crossed by the river Bradano and the streams Gravina and Jesce, there are about a hundred rare and extremely rare species. Abundant wildlife testimonies to this amazing natural wealth: foxes, hares, porcupines, wild boars and wild cats along with important birds of prey such as the red kite, the Lanner falcon, the Egyptian vulture and above all the lesser Kestrel with spread wings, the small raptor which is the park’s symbol.
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