The Archaeological and Historical Natural Park of the Rock Churches of Materano, known more simply as the Murgia Materana Park, mainly develops on the rocky plateau of the Murgia and along a side of the canyon excavated over time by the Gravina of Matera. The park surrounds the Sassi di Matera and falls within the territory of the municipalities of Matera and Montescaglioso extending over an area of approximately 8,000 hectares.
The Murgia Materana Park offers one of the most evocative and spectacular rock landscapes in the world, which is why part of the territory, together with the Sassi di Matera, has been included in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In fact, it continuously presents environments that testify to the presence of man since prehistoric times perfectly integrated with a natural environment of great value and value.
The park alternates between different environments and scenarios. The most important one is the river system of the Gravina di Matera which for over 20 kilometers runs through the canyon to join the Bradano river in the Montescaglioso area. The side slopes of this canyon are very steep slopes whose maximum height above sea level is that of the Contrada Tempa Rossa, a majestic cliff that can be seen from the Ionian coast of Metapontino. Other environments consist of Mediterranean forest, Mediterranean scrub and garrigue or pseudosteppe.
The typical scenarios that these environments produce in the Murgia Materana Park are valleys, small valleys, ravines, with upstream a series of terraces and plains where there are multiple species of great botanical and faunistic interest. Depending on the exposure, the geological nature and the presence of sources or courses of water runoff, the park presents a remarkable alternation of landscapes characterized by woods, dense Mediterranean scrub and areas where for centuries man has been conducting typical agricultural practices of the Murgian environment testified by the presence of a large number of farms.
Cultural landscape The cultural landscape of the Parco della Murgia Materana is characterized by a large number of villages and rock settlements that testify to the presence of man since prehistoric times. After the Middle Ages these complexes or rupestrian houses were mainly used as places for the shelter of animals in pastoralism practices. The cave complexes closest to the city of Matera are those of Murgia Timone, Murgecchia and Contrada Palomba.
Of great importance are the complexes located to the south where the park extends to the territory of the neighboring municipality of Montescaglioso. To the south east are the complexes of the Agna district where the famous Cave of Bats is located, the finds of which are exhibited at the Ridola National Museum, the Ofra complex, the Santissimo Crocifisso alla Selva (known as Cristo la Selva), the Villaggio Saraceno, the complexes of Murgia S. Andrea in the countryside of Montescaglioso.
Rock churches and sanctuaries The large number of rock churches in Matera and in the immediate surrounding area is one of the distinctive and most spectacular features of the rock settlement in the area. About one hundred and fifty places of worship included in a time span that from the early Middle Ages reaches the nineteenth century, closely linked to each historical, social and religious phase of the territory. The most recent critical acquisitions, based on findings made on the sources, the archaeological and architectural data, draw a very complex and articulated panorama, free from an exclusively monastic and Byzantine meaning, in which the phenomenon had been circumscribed by the first research dating back to late 19th century.
The rocky churches are presented in a different way, sometimes hidden by dense vegetation and dug along the steep banks of the ravines in inaccessible and difficult to access places, embellished with spectacular frescoes that testify to the devotion that has continued to this day. The partly excavated and partly built churches have a single nave, such as the one known as the Madonna della Croce, with two naves like the Cappuccino Vecchio church or three naves like the Madonna delle tre Porte.
The churches, especially those built in the Romanesque period, present the architectural and decorative elements typical of sub-divo churches of the period such as apses, four-lobed columns, walls that take on transept functions, walls decorated with blind arches and projecting capitals, vaults embellished with small domes concentric circles, humpback ceilings, frames decorated with broken lines. Some cave churches are connected to the presence of Benedictine monks such as the Grotta dei Santi, called today with the name of the Crypt of the Original Sin, certainly among the oldest in the region, on whose walls there is a fresco cycle dating back to the ninth century. In the patrimony of the Matera rock churches, the entire articulation of the ethnic, religious and institutional components of the area converges: monasteries, shrines, ancient parishes, episcopal institutions, are all elements present in the commissioning, possession, management, officiation of the rock churches. The rocky places of worship as well as being connected to the settlement in the territory of many ecclesiastical and civil institutions, above all satisfy a need afferent to the local population, scattered over a very large territory and therefore accompany, in their location, the formation of the territorial structures .
The oldest sources available so far attest from the VIII century rock settlements connected to the presence of Benedictine monasteries. The frescoes in the Crypt of the Original Sin connect the hypogeum to one of the large Benedictine Lombard monastic communities of the Benevento area. The abbey of S. Sofia di Benevento in 774 owns the church of S. Maria and S. Michele in Matera, generally located in the oldest part of S. Maria della Vaglia. The monastery of S. Vincenzo al Volturno in 893 holds the churches of S. Elia, a hypogeum still existing on the Murgia and the church of S. Pietro in Matina to be identified with one of the crypts still named after the Apostle. In the few remains of the abbey of S. Eustachio alla Posterga e S. Maria de Armeniis, significant rock components can be recognized, as well as in the Benedictine monastery of S. Lucia whose oldest settlement, the church and the caves of the Malve, appears almost entirely in cave. Of Benedictine origin are also the crypts of S. Gennaro al Bradano and S. Stasio alla Gravina, ancient possessions of the monastery of S. Lucia, and the churches of the Holy Spirit and S. Maria delle Virtù, then passed to the nuns of Accon . Finally, the abbey of Montescaglioso, founded in the eleventh century, also has rock churches located in the Murgia of S. Andrea. In the best preserved Benedictine crypts, there are three-nave basilica plants and frescoed cycles in which typical iconographies of the Latin monastic tradition occur.
Although there is no direct evidence in the sources about the presence of Italian-Greek monasteries in the area surrounding Matera, some rock churches are to be related to the Byzantine ethnic component of the area. The crypts of the Cappuccino Vecchio, S. Falcione, S. Maria di Olivares, S. Nicola dei Greci probably belong to this area, the four hermit churches of the monastic settlement of the Loë valley dated between the ninth and tenth centuries and the phase older than S. Barbara before the realization of the frescoes still present in the church. In the Saraceno village there are Byzantine churches used to serve the rural population such as S. Luca where there is even a small baptistery, and the church of S. Nicola, in a place of difficult access, probably a refuge for the hermit monk.
Other cave churches are small rural sanctuaries, sometimes dedicated to the Archangel but especially named after the Virgin. Michaelic crypts dating back to the XI-XII centuries are in Ofra, at the Pipistrelli cave and in Cozzo S. Angelo, near Montescaglioso. Among the Marian rock sanctuaries, of particular importance is the site on which today's Palomba sanctuary is built and the imposing crypt of S. Maria della Vaglia which, taking into account the identification with the church mentioned in the document of the Dukes of Benevento of 774, it could be the oldest Marian sanctuary in Matera.
Other sanctuaries frequented respectively by the populations of Matera and Montescaglioso are Cristo la Selva and Madonna della Murgia.
In the city, churches of remarkable workmanship and quality are the complex of Convicinio S. Antonio, dell'Idris, S. Giovanni in Monterrone and S. Nicola dei Greci. Significant rock phases can also be recognized in some of the main parish churches such as S. Pietro Barisano and S. Pietro Caveoso while also in the monasteries of S. Francesco and S. Agostino, crypts existing prior to the settlement of the community have been found.
Countless churches dug near small rural settlements or along the ancient paths that link the city to the countryside. These recognize architectural elements taken from "above ground" architecture but above all an excavation aimed at creating the most indispensable elements for the officiation of the place of worship with a minimum expenditure of resources. The excavation of the classroom is sometimes accompanied by the masonry construction of the facade or other internal structures. In the plants the elements constituting the masonry buildings are found, contextualized, however, in the difficult rocky environment
The churches have a single hall or three or two naves.
Often they are concluded by apses sometimes preceded by small transepts. In many crypts there is a hint of a dome made with a lenticular excavation, while the memory of the roofs of the brick churches appears in the use of humpback ceilings detectable in the most complex hypogea. In the territory, crypts of considerable interest, and some still well preserved, can be found along the Gravina, the Bradano, the main tributaries of the two rivers and on the edge of the oldest road network. The Madonna degli Angeli highlights a very precise excavation technique and a wide range of frescoes.
The Madonna dei Derelitti preserves an elegant brick facade. In the crypts of S. Falcione and S. Vito alla Murgia there are two presbyters preceded by a single room. At Cappuccino Vecchio, the rare two-aisle system is presented in all its complexity and elegance. In the Madonna delle Tre Porte, the significant element as well as the residual set of frescoes consists of the plan with three naves with opposite apses. The crypts of Cristo la Selva and S. Martino are at the center of a vast settlement inhabited by shepherds. S. Eustachio alla Selva Venusio, although partially collapsed, still allows you to read the three-nave structure with niches and side chapels. Other churches located along the main road network constitute precise cornerstones in the area serving small agro-pastoral communities or serving as simple rural chapels. The crypt of the Evangelists preserves evidence of a large frescoed cycle. Our Lady of Abundance is among the largest underground churches. S. Pietro in Principibus all'Appia, highlights an elegant basilica layout. The heritage of the rock churches in the Park area constitutes a unicum whose articulation and complexity in terms of history and spirituality contributes to delineating the identity of a very large area.
Particularly interesting is the geological history of the Murgia Materana which has produced a complex natural environment with specific types of rock. The two main rocks, limestone and calcarenite, will be decisive for both prehistoric and more recent human settlements.
The geological conformation of the Murgian area is generally attributable to the formation of the Southern Apennines. The rocks that make up the Murgia Materana are those of the Mesozoic carbonate platform and of the organogenic carbonate deposits of the Plio-Pleistocene shallow sea. The rocky outcrops present in the lower strata along the ravine of Matera, which represent the eroded carbonate substrate, consist of limestones dating back to the Cretaceous period (65 million years). On this base rests the Calcarenite, much more recent rock (Upper Pliocene-Lower Pleistocene) organogenic-lithoclastic which is locally called tuff but different from the "tuff" properly said that it is of volcanic origin.
These two types of rock, both carbonate, have different structures, granulometry and origins. Limestone is extremely compact, hard and very fractured, Calcarenite is a soft and easily modifiable rock. It was the characteristics of these two rocks that determined the settlement of man in this environment since prehistoric times. Over time, rock faces already rich in caves and karst ravines have been created more and more complex and evolved rock habitats, visible today in large numbers along the slopes of the Gravina di Matera. On the western side, the rocky urban center of the Sassi di Matera originated and developed.
The park preserves a considerable variety of plants typical of the Mediterranean forest such as the downy oak, the Macedonian oak, the carob, the holm oak, the Mediterranean maquis such as the juniper, the mastic, the broom, and the garrigue such as the cistus, the butcher's broom, the thyme thorny, the ferula and the asphodel. Numerous are the varieties of flowers such as the meadows' widow, the Apulian bellflower, the Ionic helm, the elegant convolvulus, the tommasini linen, the saffron of thomas and the ofris matheolana a small and rare endemic orchid.
One hundred are the rare and very rare species including many entities of Mediterranean-Eastern irradiation, over 60 those of new reporting for the Lucanian flora and 36 are endemic and subendemic species, that is, those entities with a range consisting of fairly restricted geographical areas.
In the Park, the presence of man since the Palaeolithic era has profoundly affected the natural balance. Human activities have produced the progressive rarefaction of the woods to the advantage of the spread of herbaceous species which over time have formed vast areas of garrigue and pseudosteppa. These environments play a role of great importance in the biodiversity of the Murgian territory precisely because of the great wealth of species that colonize these areas open and free of tree vegetation.
The fauna of the Murgia Materana Park is characteristic of the different environments that are present: the plains on top of the hills, the steep slopes of the rocky walls on the river sides, the deep gorges and the fresh blades, which alternate continuously in the territory.
Along the paths it is possible to meet different mammals among which: porcupines, martens, foxes, weasels, badgers, wild cats and wild boars. As for reptiles, it is possible to meet different turtles, snakes including the green whip snake, the four-lined snake, the grass snake and the aspic viper, the leopard snake which takes its name from the characteristic color at the top, with skin spots of red-yellow or blood-red leopard. There are also numerous amphibians and insects.
Particularly important is the birdlife of the Park which has numerous species, some rare or very rare. The presence of the black stork and the sea jay is spectacular, while among the birds of prey stand the Egyptian vulture, the buzzard, the black kite and the lesser kestrel, a small hawk that has become a symbol of the park, which arrives in spring from the African savannas, reproduces and autumn heads for wintering in the southwest of the Sahara desert.
