Anyone who sees Matera,
can not fail to be impressed,
so expressive and touching,
its painful beauty.
The housing conditions of the historic center of Matera, known as Sassi, were brought to the national spotlight by the publication, in 1945, of the book "Christ stopped at Eboli", set in Aliano, a town in the province of Matera, where the author Carlo Levi had spent his confinement period during fascism. Only a few pages of the book are actually dedicated to Matera and the living conditions in the cave-houses of the Sassi, but sufficient to make it the dramatic description of the city in the years of its greatest decline:
"Every family usually has only one of those caves per house and they all sleep together, men, women, children, animals. (...) I saw children sitting at the doors of the houses, in the dirt, in the sun that was burning, with half-closed eyes and red and swollen eyelids. It was trachoma. (...) It seemed to be in the middle of a city hit by the plague ... "
Recalled by the clamor of the book, the most famous sociologists, anthropologists, journalists and intellectuals of the time (among many, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Adriano Olivetti, Ernesto De Martino, Manlio Rossi-Doria) visited and described Matera, which became, in spite of itself, the symbol of the backwardness of Southern Italy and of the "rural civilization". The Sassi became the object of attention for the political class, that visited and described them as "national infamy" (Alcide De Gasperi, DC) and "shame of Italy" (Palmiro Togliatti, PCI), hoping for a definitive solution for the their accommodation.
In 1952 the De Gasperi Government promulgated the Special Law 619 for the Restructuring of the Sassi, which although initially envisaged the recovery of Matera’s historical center, in fact caused its total evacuation and abandonment, with the forced and mass transfer of the inhabitants into new ones wards (both urban and rural) purposely built by the State. Being outside the perimeter of the Sassi, only the inhabitants of the “Piano” were excluded from the displacement. Not only those who lived in cave dwellings were transferred from the Sassi, but also those who lived in built houses, which in fact constituted the majority of the inhabitants of the Sassi. The old houses were almost all expropriated by the State Property Department: only a fifth of the properties remained in private hands. Even today the Sassi of Matera are the only historical center in Europe almost exclusively owned by the State. The displacement was followed by decades of complete abandonment: the Sassi became a ghost town, an empty shell, a derelict, deserted and abandoned ghetto, characterized by collapses and decay, and although contiguous, also completely detached from the rest of the city and removed from the minds of who had lived there.
Some people of the Matera did not resign to the sad fate of the Sassi and the infamy they had been superficially branded. Cultural associations, intellectuals, politicians, ordinary citizens, formed a movement of opinion that aimed at the cultural and historical redemption of the city. A fierce debate affected the 70s: were the Sassi going back to being an inhabited city or did they have to become a lifeless museum of themselves? The path of repopulation was chosen: the Sassi had to come back to life. Given the almost whole State ownership, a new special law by the Parliament was needed, nr. 771 of 1986, which finally allowed to start the recovery, still in progress. For the first time in history, a large-scale urban redevelopment was experimented: it was necessary to revive an abandoned city that had hosted 18,000 people, recovering the historic buildings and allocating them to new, modern functions. The formula adopted still includes the free concession of State-owned buildings to private individuals who become responsible for the costs of "conservative restoration".
Now aware of its value and its historical and cultural heritage, the city was nominated in 1993 for inclusion on the UNESCO World Heritage List: only 7 Italian cities had been included in this list and none of them was south of Rome. At that time many people branded this initiative as bold and unrealistic: the Sassi were a place considered by public opinion as a symbol of underdevelopment.
By overturning the mark of "National Shame" against any short-sighted prediction, the Sassi of Matera were recognized as "World Heritage" and to describe them, the expression "cultural landscape" was used for the first time by UNESCO:a unique testimony of human activity. The pre-eminent universal value derives from the symbiosis between the cultural and natural characteristics of the place.
The revival of the Sassi had just begun and would have reserved further recognition, unimaginable in the 1950s.
The historic center of Matera consists of four areas:
1. Civita, the oldest city nucleus, where the Cathedral stands;
2. Sasso Barisano, a district located in the valley that extends in front of the Cathedral;
3. Sasso Caveoso, a district situated in the valley on the right side of the Cathedral, close to the Gravina canyon;
4. the Piano, a flat area that frames the upper margin of the Sassi districts, of more recent urban development.
Today the Civita, Sasso Barisano and Sasso Caveoso districts form a single urban complex generically identified as the Sassi of Matera.
In the early Middle Ages the Civita was very distinct from the Sassi: the first constituted the proper city, surrounded by walls and fortifications; the Sassi were suburban hamlets used for different purposes. The Sassi of Matera are the result of an unparalleled urban development. Totally constructed buildings, which normally make up the totality of an urban space, here constitute only a minimal part of it. In fact, in the Sassi of Matera, the built architectures integrate and blend with the excavated architecture. These are not natural caves, but environments dug by man to obtain both construction material for outdoor environments, and hypogeum places particularly suitable for different uses and functions. In some areas of the Sassi the excavated parts are already evident at first glance; more often they are hidden from view by those built.
This unusual urban development has been favored by the nature of the territory, characterized by a rock that is easy to excavate and at the same time an excellent building material (calcarenite), and by steep natural slopes that offer rocky walls to attack.
The result is an intricate, complex and extraordinary urban nucleus, extended on various levels for a total of 35 hectares, where the roads run on the roofs of the underlying environments, with a succession of over 3 thousand structures, excavated and built, used for different uses in the over the centuries, still today easily readable to the watchful eyes: noble palaces, cisterns, cellars, oil mills, stairways, Byzantine, Romanesque and Baroque churches, small houses and large monasteries, cave dwellings, cemeteries, squares, shops, bell towers, stables, neighborhoods, courtyards, portals, towers and hanging gardens.
The territory of Matera has known a continuous human presence, that since the Paleolithic, has continued without interruption up to nowadays, as evidenced by the finds preserved in the Ridola Archaeological Museum. To the few natural caves present, used as a shelter in the Paleolithic, caves dug by the hand of man were added during the Neolithic, and the birth of small villages of huts, whose remains are still visible in the Park of the Murgia Materana.
Important findings of the Metals Age, such as the famous “little grotto tombs” and the monumental “double-circle tomb” of Murgia Timone.
Although the continuity of human presence in the territory has been demonstrated, the moment in which there was the birth of a real city, endowed with institutions, religious centers and fortifications remains uncertain. The existence of a city in Greek and Roman times is not very well supported by any archeological evidence. Only since the early Middle Ages (8th century AD) the presence of a real city is supported by irrefutable evidence: Matera was built on the Civita, fortified on the top of a hill where the cathedral stands today. Outside the walls, in the valleys of the Sasso Barisano and Sasso Caveoso, the so-called hamlets, complexes that brought together residential and productive structures, which were populated over the centuries, were distributed in large meshes.
In the Renaissance, the Sassi districts were now fully integrated with the Civita, and formed most of the city. These areas were not overcrowded and inhabited by lower classes, as in the common imagery they are often painted: they were neighborhoods populated by all social classes, including many noble families, and the density of habitation allowed vegetable gardens, vineyards and gardens. The excavated parts were generally not intended for residential use, since, presenting conditions of humidity, darkness and constant temperature, they were suitable for different uses, such as cellars, mills, granaries, cheese dairies, mills, water cisterns, tanneries, ice-houses, stables. They used to live in buildings while in the excavated part, they used to produce and store, with a better quality and quantity than cities not equipped with underground structures.
In 1663 the kingdom of Naples authorities drew new regional borders and Matera was detached from the Terra d’Otranto (Apulia), to which it historically belonged, to become the “capital” of Basilicata, with favorable economic, demographic and urbanistic consequences. During the eighteenth century the city extended beyond the Sassi, in the area of the Piano, enriching with baroque churches, noble palaces and wealthy monasteries.
The first sign of economic decadence for Matera came already with the transfer of regional capital in favor of the city of Potenza (1809) and the laws against the clergy during the Napoleonic period. Matera had a substantial proportion of its population in the clergy and the expropriation of Church assets, broke the balance on which the social and economic structure of Matera had been based.
Another severe blow will be set by the discovery of Australia. Until the end of the XVIII century the local economy prospered thanks to the large-scale transhumant sheep and goat farming thanks to the extensive pastures on the Murge. The wool production supported the local textile production and involved a large part of the population. The inexorable decadence of Matera was caused by the massive production of Australian wool that with the very favorable concessions to the British artifacts decreed by the Congress of Vienna, allowed the British Empire companies to flood the European continent with their products at competitive prices, getting down on their knees the wool industry of vast areas of the Mediterranean, including Matera.
The living conditions of the urban population progressively deteriorated, particularly in the poor social classes, and often the strong demand for living spaces was resolved with an even denser occupation of the existing structures. The excavated structures of the Sassi, which over the centuries had been destined to various activities, generally productive, and now inadequate for this function, thus became the immediate and low-cost solution to meet these needs. Many caves, once wineries, oil mills or stables, became cave dwellings, which accommodated up to 4 thousand people, out of a total of 18 thousand of the Sassi inhabitants, thus overcrowded. In cave houses the family often cohabited with a mule, necessary to reach the fields, and other domestic animals like hens, aggravating the already difficult living conditions.
In the long history of the Sassi, this is the last frame before the abandonment.
The excavated architecture of Matera are thousands and are here classified into different types. It is not a rigid scheme, since according to the conveniences of the time the excavation was adapted to a new destination of use and therefore each cavity preserves traces belonging to different types. Although almost all the caves in the area have been excavated by man, therefore true architectures, there are important exceptions. These are karstic cavities were created by the water action along the contact line of two calcareous layers of different hardness, which were used in prehistoric times as burial or cult places.
The most famous is the "Grotta dei Pipistrelli" on the side of the ravine canyon a few kilometers from the Sassi. Frequented since the Paleolithic, it is characterized by the continuous dripping of water, the presence of bats and entire traits that can only be walked on all fours. Difficult to reach without a guide, it has been the subject of important archaeological excavations, whose finds are exhibited at the Ridola Museum.
The friability of the local rock has allowed excavation since the Neolithic, using only lithic tools. They did not live in caves but in villages formed by huts, often enclosed by deep trenches.
Excavations were also carried out close to rocky walls to be used as shelters but they were modified over the following millennia, losing their original structure. The trenches of the Neolithic settlements are still clearly visible (it is thought they were intended for both residential and livestock uses) and the "cave tombs" of the metal age.
The Neolithic village of Murgia Timone, near Jazzo Gattini, provides a valuable example of a trench-equipped settlement. Carved into the rock, it encloses the "village" in two large circles joined by a passage. Within the entrenched space, there are numerous holes that bear witness to the foundation piles of the huts, and pits used as storage. Along the trench the monumental "double-circle tomb" was built in a later period: an example still intact of the "little grotto" type, which includes a small artificial cavity surrounded by a double circle of stones.
These are places of worship excavated in the rock, dating back to different periods and are present in a considerable number (up to 150 have been cataloged) both in the Sassi and in the territory of Matera. These are not natural caves, they are similar to caves, but truly excavated architectures, which have nothing to envy to built architecture, and indeed often propose shapes, structure and decorations: domes, women's galleries, columns, pilasters, apses, iconostasis , baptismal fonts, confessionals, altars: everything is derived from the excavation work, with a process that is often called "architecture in negative", where there is remotion from the solid rather than building something.
A thesis now outdated and devoid of any foundation, was that the churches were dug by Byzantine hermit monks. In reality each of them has its own genesis and vicissitudes, quite within the local historical context, as much as the built churches. Many still preserve the original pictorial decoration, although almost all have been reused with other destinations of use. These are mostly medieval frescoes depicting icons of saints, and with some important exceptions of scenes and cycles, they are the work of local and southern craftsmen, often of valuable workmanship.
The oldest and most representative cycle of frescoes in the area is represented by the Genesis, a masterpiece dating back 830 AD, period when the city was dominated by the Longobards. It is laid out on the walls of the so-called "Crypt of Original Sin", outside the city. In the heart of the Sassi stands the Monterrone, a rocky emergency in which there are carved Madonna de Idris and San Giovanni in Monterrone, which preserve valuable frescoes representative of the medieval type of icons. An excellent idea of the complexity of the excavated architecture is provided by the churches of Madonna delle Virtù with its four-lobed pillars and simulated galleries on the vault, from Santa Lucia alle Malve, rich in hanging arches, niches and domes and by Santa Barbara, which preserves intact the excavated iconostasis. The destiny of re-use common to almost all these places is well witnessed by the Convicinio di Sant’Antonio, a complex of 4 communicating places of worship, transformed into cellars in the eighteenth century, where the wine mills coexist with fourteenth-century frescoes. The only burial place open to the public is in the hypogeum of San Pietro Barisano, with the so-called draining catacombs, where the deceased were placed on seats carved into the rock.
The most monumental of the rock churches is the Madonna della Vaglia, just outside the city, with 4 portals and 3 apsed aisles, but currently closed to the public. Madonna delle tre porte, in the Parco della Murgia in Matera, witnessed the most striking incident in a cave church in the last century, having suffered the theft of almost all of its frescoes, later recovered thanks to careful and daring investigations of Francesco Foschino a local history expert.
During the Byzantine period (IX-XI century), fiscal policies favored the settlements in the countryside: small rural villages were built in the countryside, the farmhouses, which united residential and productive structures to be abandoned later during the thirteenth century. Among these rural settlements, many rocky farms are still found and well preserved precisely because they were dug out of solid rock. Inside the houses you can easily recognize caves belonging to the different types described earlier, from places of worship to houses, to places of production. Let’s bear in mind that some of these hamlets, close to the urban core, constituted the primordial cells of the Sassi.
The most complete and representative of the rocky farmhouses is the "Villaggio Saraceno", which takes its name from the Saraceno family to which it belonged, and is about 10 km from the Sassi. There are over 90 caves, lined up along a small tributary valley of the ravine. Among these, the church of Santa Maria al Visciolo (already known as San Luca) stands out, the best preserved example of a 11th century cave church, and typical examples of country houses, paths and cisterns. The paths is not signposted, but the hike is easy with the help of a guide.
The rock that makes up the Murge plateau, due to its porosity, does not allow superficial water courses. Therefore in the past it was necessary to build pools, cisterns and tanks to have water all year round. Elements common to all these units are the excavation in the rock and the waterproofing obtained with the "coccio pesto", a special plaster based on crushed terracotta.
To quench the thirst of the animals in rural areas, the “roof cisterns” were made outdoors, which collected rainwater and were equipped with a small settling tank. In urban areas and for human consumption the "bell cisterns" were used, which were made to filter the rainwater through an ingenious "overflow” system: the water overflows from one tank to the next and settles gradually. Along these private cisterns, there was also a monumental public one called “Palombaro”, by colossal dimensions and fed with spring water. The roof cisterns are widespread in the "Parco della Murgia Materana" also near Jazzo Gattini.
The complex of San Giorgio offers an instructive example of bell cisterns of a private residence. Here specially designed routes allow you to enter the cisterns and to closely observe the filtering system, the plaster and the filling inlets. The absence of a floor makes it possible to see the connection channels.
The Palombaro Lungo, below Piazza Vittorio Veneto, is the most impressive public cistern in the city. It has a capacity of 5 million liters of water for a depth of 18 meters and a length of 50 meters, distributed in a sinuous and unusual shape, as a result of the unification of pre-existing underground environments. Explored for the first time only in 1991, and almost completely emptied to allow access, today it is visitable by walking on a catwalk suspended over the water.
A Norman castle was built at the entrance of the Civita, an area today called Castelvecchio and there are still some recognizable traces of this structure. On a hill overlooking the ancient city, the Tramontano Castle was erected in 1514, at the behest of the Neapolitan Count Giancarlo Tramontano and but never completed due to his assassination following a popular uprising.
This episode is among the most important in the historical tradition of the city: the count is described as a despot who starved the town, who therefore executed him near the Cathedral (where the count happened to be unarmed), in a street that was named Via Riscatto (Redemption Street), a name that still exists.
Motivations of political and economic nature, due to contrast with the local nobility, were actually the reasons of his murder and subsequent damnatio memoriae. Nowadays the castle is surrounded by a large urban park used also for concerts. There are three towers, with the central being the donjon.
The main city churches built belong to two historical periods: Romanico (Duecento) and Barocco (eighteenth century). The Cathedral is an exceptional synthesis of both: it was completed in 1270 according to the canons of the Apulian Romanesque, as is evident when observing the exterior: the gable roof, the large central rose window, the portals, the zoomorphic sculptures; the interior is baroque instead following the interventions carried out in the eighteenth century, as evidenced by the marble altars, the decorations in pure gold, the painted false ceiling, which concealed the previous furnishings, with the exception of a monumental local stone crib dated 1534. Indeed, removing part of the Baroque furnishings, fourteenth-century frescoes were found including an engaging depiction of the Last Judgment.
The greatest example of the city, still intact, of the flourishing Romanesque season in Matera is the unmissable church of San Giovanni Battista. Its rich and unusual main façade was once the side façade, and in fact the exterior of the apse, with griffins and elephants, is immediately visible from the side. The interior is unforgettable: it has high cross vaults supported by four-lobed columns, these are surmounted by two levels of elaborate capitals, decorated with fantastic figures and plant motifs: the whole offers a cozy and suggestive atmosphere.
The season of the Matera Baroque mainly concerns the area of the Piano, although the Sassi also present important examples (Sant’Agostino, San Pietro Barisano and partly San Pietro Caveoso). The elaborate façade of San Francesco d'Assisi immediately reminds the "Baroque of Lecce", with the Virgin in the center surmounted by a crown with a fake drapery, the Franciscan saints par excellence on its sides (S. Francesco and S. Antonio da Padua) and flaming arabesques at the base.
The most surprising building is the church of Purgatory, which starts the Baroque axis of Via Ridola. It has an unusual curved façade divided into two floors. The attention is immediately captured by the macabre elements such as skulls, femurs, skeletons, crossed bones, which refer to the memento mori: here they prayed for the salvation of the souls in purgatory. On the upper level, guardian angels, crowns of flowers and the Virgin stand out. The interior is surprising for the richness of the decorations, among which are paintings on the passion of Christ, the high octagonal dome, a valuable eighteenth-century organ and depictions of purgative souls enveloped in flames.
