A story about Matera

Every place has a story, but not like this. This is a story that will surprise and inspire you to want to know more. Having read about an ancient city called Matera located in Basilicata in the instep of the boot, I was intrigued. It was nine years ago in October 2014 when I visited for the first time and it literally took my breath away. It still does.

Throughout Italy there are medieval hilltop towns and villages, but you will rarely experience anything like Matera. Not only is it the third oldest continually inhabited place in the world after Aleppo and Jericho, but it is believed to be the first human settlement in Italy with residents taking root in the Paleolithic Age. Man never left. Archaelogical remains of a human skeleton were found dating back to over 250,000 years ago. Unlike many hilltop towns which are built onto the rock, Matera is built into it. The rock cut dwellings are known simply as the Sassi, meaning stones.

The ancient city has two neighbourhoods known as Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano. Less than seventy years ago, around 30,000 people were still living in caves carved out of limestone that housed families with an average of six children. They slept amongst the mule, pig and chickens under the bed. Malaria, cholera and typhoid were rampart and people were dying of starvation.

The extent of the squalid conditions and poverty in the Sassi only came to international attention when writer, Carlo Levi, was exiled by Mussolini for his political activisim to a town close to Matera in 1935. In his book, Christ Stopped at Eboli, published in 1945, Levi described the horror he witnessed. Carlo Levi was like the Bob Geldof of his time. The book was essentially saying: “Italy, shame on you. Shame on you for letting Basilicata become so poor and unhygienic. Shame on you for not taking better care of your citizens.” There was no running water; no sanitation; people lived with their livestock in abject poverty and caves were damp and derelict.

In 1950 the Italian Prime Minister visited Matera which he described as “a national disgrace”. This set in motion a chain of events that led to the first evacuation of 15,000 people in 1952 to newly built homes in the outer areas of the Sassi. In the 1960s a new Bill determined that the Sassi be completely evacuated and abandoned. Most people were happy to leave.

It was Carlo Levi who opposed that the Sassi be allowed to slip into oblivion and deterioration. The area had to be preserved and protected for its historical and social value. In 1986 a new law was passed to move people back in. In a complete turnaround from the fifties, the government encouraged the Sassi’s revival by subsidising restoration work. Artisans moved in to set up workshops while bars, restaurants and boutique hotels and B&B’s opened up in renovated cave dwellings.

Matera’s true rocky soul was lost and then found.

Two events occurred that put Matera on the tourist map. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993. Contrary to belief it was not for the city’s history or architecture. Matera had no water source, so an ingenious system of rainwater channels and cisterns was excavated beneath homes. It was these channels and cisterns that earnt Matera inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Secondly, Mel Gibson filmed The Passion of the Christ in 2004. In fact, since the fifties there have been no less than thirty movies filmed in Matera with the most recent being the James Bond movie, No Time To Die. However, tourism only really took off after 2014 when Matera won its bid to become the European Capital of Culture for 2019! There were 1500 entries and Matera won. Imagine the joy!

Today, over 2,000 people live in the ancient town, typically renting from the government who own 70% of the Sassi. The best way to explore the Sassi is on foot as you navigate your way up and down uneven stone stairways and along lanes that zig zag past a tangle of stone houses stacked nine layers high. One person’s floor is another person’s roof. And as you wander aimlessly, you can’t help but feel an emotion and a sense of awe as you pass abandoned streets, caves and tiny courtyards where children once played.

Ancient Matera sits on the edge of a deep ravine several kilometres long with a stream flowing through it. The whole area is part of the protected Parco della Murgia Materana. A 3.5 kilometre return walk takes you down into the ravine, across a very cool suspension bridge and up the other side to caves once inhabited 10,000 years ago. To stand in one of these caves with spectacular views across the ravine to the Sassi is well worth the walk.

Pane di Matera: the ancient bread of Basilicata

On the surface it doesn’t seem like much. Flour, water, yeast, salt - the same four ingredients that make up most loaves of bread. Yet pane di Matera is entirely different, a hulking beast of a loaf with a hard, dark brown crust and pale yellow crumb. The locals say the shape, roughly conical, resembles the harsh nearby mountains of Murgia. The intense flavour and aroma comes in part from the quality of the wheat here. The bread is made with natural yeast taken from grapes and figs fermented in local spring water; the dough is then left to ferment and rise over a long period of time, much like sourdough. Tear the bread open and you’re greeted by that distinctive yellow crumb and the rich smell of baked bread.

Up until the 1950s, local families would take their dough to be baked in the communal ovens. Each family would have a stamp with their initials on it to be stamped on the dough before baking. People would book a time in the morning for their bread to be baked and an oven assistant would walk the streets of Matera, announcing the start of each slot (at six, eight and ten) with a shrill blast of the whistle.

Today Matera is a national treasure and the most dramatic story of rebirth. It is no longer the dirty secret of Italy, but the pride of Italy.

“Anyone who sees Matera cannot help but be awe-struck, so expressive and touching is its sorrowful beauty.”

This is how Carlo Levi described Matera in 1952.

Ci vediamo la prossima settimana.

Deb