Cammino Materano: Matera!

Taking notes for this post

Matera! 

What can I possibly write about such an extraordinary city? 

That it is one of the oldest continually inhabited settlements in the world? 

That it is a city where you can live in a cave? 

That it is a city where the streets you walk on are the roof of someone else's house? 

Or that it is the only city centre in the world to have been completely evacuated and abandoned... and then resettled?

The Sassi di Matera have been inhabited since neolithic and possibly even paleolithic times, but the city's written history dates back to the Roman Emperor Metulla, who surrounded the city with walls and towers in 251 B.C. and may even have named it "Matheola" after himself. In the seventh or eighth century of the Christian era Benedictine monks and Basilian monks from the Byzantine Empire opened monasteries on the site. The monks set up their churches in the grottos in the canyon walls, digging deeper into the rock when they wanted to enlarge them, carving pillars and altars into the calcarenite stone, commonly referred to as "tufo". 

The pastoral people of the area settled around the monasteries on the hillside above the ravine in which the Gravina River runs, forming a good-sized city by the Middle Ages.

By the year 1500 the city was flourishing, growing so rapidly that the caves excavated into the rock were no longer enough to house the booming population. The blocks of stone removed to dig deeper into the rock were used to build upwards and outwards, adding new rooms onto the cave dwellings and building entire palaces that blend in perfectly with the pale beige stone of the rocky landscape. Matera was a flourishing centre of trade and craftsmanship, as well as an agricultural hub. 

After the year 1500 the decline of a lifestyle and economy centring around livestock-raising out in the country, as well as new developments in agriculture permitting a steep rise in population, led to more and more numerous, and larger, families congregating in the old town centre. Every available space, from cisterns to storehouses and abandoned chapels, was converted into a family home. The booming population made the city into a sort of human anthill, housing about 18,000 souls! 

To ensure a constant supply of drinking water for this vast city, in the sixteenth century the municipal authorities expropriated a number of adjacent cellars and cisterns located on the site of underground springs and joined them all together to form a single public reservoir for the city. In 1882 this was expanded further, producing the Palombaro Lungo, in service until the construction of the Acquedotto Pugliese made it unnecessary in 1920. Rediscovered in 1991, this giant underground cistern has now been drained and is open to visitors. 

In 1809 Napoleon shut down the monasteries, here as elsewhere, and many of the city's 156 rock churches, built by hollowing out the rock of the cliffs to form the conventional shape of a church above ground, complete with frescoed walls, arches and columns, were leased out after the monastic orders had been stripped of their wealth and power. Whole families moved into the abandoned chapels, converting niches and altars into mangers for their animals and side chapels into bedrooms and kitchens. 

Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario 

In these and other cave dwellings, the only source of light and ventilation was the door, which had to be left open all day long. People spent most of their time outdoors, in the squares and courtyards among the rock dwellings, or out in the fields tending to their sheep, but even so, the caves were extremely unhealthy as human habitations. Cold and damp, with no ventilation other than the open door, in a space shared with chickens, perhaps a mule, a goat or even a pig, these homes led to a very short life expectancy and an infant mortality rate of almost 50% in the Matera of the 19th and early 20th centuries. 

Despite - or perhaps because of - these inhuman conditions, the people of Matera were the first in southern Italy to rebel against the Nazi occupation in 1943. 

In 1945, anti-fascist writer, painter and doctor Carlo Levi published his memoirs of his time in internal exile in the nearby village of Aliano, including a chapter quoting the impressions of his sister, also a doctor, describing what she had seen in Matera, when she went to apply for a permit to visit him. 

“Dentro quei buchi neri dalle pareti di terra vedevo i letti, le misere suppellettili, i cenci stesi. Sul pavimento erano sdraiati i cani, le pecore, le capre, i maiali. Ogni famiglia ha in genere una sola di quelle grotte per abitazione e ci dormono tutti insieme, uomini, donne, bambini, bestie. Di bambini ce n’era un’infinità, nudi o coperti di stracci. Ho visto dei bambini seduti sull’uscio delle case, nella sporcizia, al sole che scottava, con gli occhi semichiusi e le palpebre rosse e gonfie. Era il tracoma. Sapevo che ce n’era quaggiù: ma vederlo così nel sudiciume e nella miseria è un’altra cosa. E le mosche si posavano sugli occhi e quelli pareva che non le sentissero coi visini grinzosi come dei vecchi e scheletrici per la fame: i capelli pieni di pidocchi e di croste. Le donne magre con dei lattanti denutriti e sporchi attaccati a dei seni vizzi, sembrava di essere in mezzo ad una città colpita dalla peste.”

- Carlo Levi, Cristo si è fermato ad Eboli

"The alleys in the narrow space between the houses and the hillside did double service: they were a roadway for those who came out of their houses from above and a roof for those who lived beneath. The houses were open on account of the heat, and as I went by I could see into the caves, whose only light came in through the front doors. Some of them had no entrance but a trapdoor and ladder. In these dark holes with walls cut out of the earth I saw a few pieces of miserable furniture, beds, and some ragged clothes hanging up to dry. On the floor lays dogs, sheep, goats, and pigs. Most families have just one cave to live in and there they sleep all together; men, women, children, and animals. This is how twenty thousand people live. 

"Of children I saw an infinite number. They appeared from everywhere, in the dust and heat, amid the flies, stark naked or clothed in rags; I have never in all my life seen such a picture of poverty."

- Carlo Levi, Christ Stopped at Eboli

The first edition 

The publication of Levi's book caused a public outcry, and various politicians and intellectuals began to investigate the matter. In 1948 Communist party leader and deputy prime minister Palmiro Togliatti went to Matera to see for himself, and called the city "the shame of the nation". 

What happened next is concisely described by Dolly Shares in her essay published on the Ploughshares blog: "The significance of Christ Stopped at Eboli is not just in its writing but also in its status as a historical artifact, around which great political changes were initiated. Following its publication in 1945, it garnered the attention of prime minister Alcide De Gasperi, who vowed to clear up 'the shame of Italy'. What he ended up offering was an ill-conceived government programme to relocate Matera’s people and renovate the grottos. Beginning in 1954, the city’s population of roughly 16,000 was slowly moved into a housing project at the outskirts of town. Once settled, however, it did not take long for the flaws in the plan to reveal themselves. To begin with, the transition disrupted the communities of the Sassi, leaving people isolated in an alien environment. These social issues were compounded by economic struggles, as the city’s residents were told to make a living off agriculture but were provided with limited, and somewhat unworkable, plots. By the 1960s, all the locals had moved on to seek employment opportunities elsewhere, leaving the city an empty shell."

The city centre was left an empty shell, and so, perhaps, were its people, forcibly evicted from their homes (they could stay on the condition that they upgrade them to modern standards of sanitation, but none of them could afford to pay for such renovations) and moved into soulless public housing estates in the suburbs. Some of them became factory workers, and builders employed in the construction of those very suburbs, as well as the "ideal" agricultural villages constructed in the surrounding countryside, designed by Italy's finest architects in the Rationalist style in vogue at the time. But the vast majority of the people ended up emigrating to seek work elsewhere. 

Better than a cave?

Statue of Prime Minister De Gasperi, beside the housing estates he had built

It took twelve years to complete the eviction of the residents of the entire city centre; for the next twenty years the Sassi of Matera stood empty, a crumbling ghost town. 

But crumbling ghost towns have their uses! The abandoned city made a perfect film set, and between 1950 and 2021, 80 movies were filmed in Matera. Among the best-known of these are Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to Saint Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion of  Christ, in both of which Matera stands in for ancient Jerusalem. 

Pier Paolo Pasolini in Matera with Jesus Christ, aka Spanish actor Enrique Irazoqui

The movies attracted public attention to Matera once again, and so did Carlo Levi, who attempted to make up for the unintended damage caused by his well-meaning denunciation of the horrendous living conditions in the city by making a public appeal for people to move back into the Sassi in 1967. However it was not until 1986 that this became possible: the city of Matera offered a 99-year lease on the historic properties in the ancient city centre to anyone who would promise to restore them - to strict criteria - at their own expense. A small community of artists and intellectuals began to colonise the abandoned old town centre, and it became hip to live in a cave. Or even spend a night in one, or eat a meal: decaying properties were renovated for use as hotels, restaurants and B&Bs, as well as chic little arts and crafts galleries. 

Four thousand people now live permanently in the Sassi di Matera, in addition to the holidaymakers who stay in vacation rentals in the area. 

Old homes restored as accommodations in the Sassi 

The cellars of the restaurant Il Terrazzino, which offers an excellent pilgrim menu

Agriristories boutique and restaurant, serving organic local food & wine, also offers a pilgrim menu

One last toast to the Cammino Materano! 

The city of Matera got another major boost when it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993, and again in 2014 when it was named European Cultural Capital for the year 2019.

Historic Matera now offers a vast range of tourist accommodations for all tastes and budgets, from luxury "cave hotels" with spas dug into the rock to a hostel right on the edge of the old part of the city. The Ostello dei Sassi is currently closed for renovations, but we found a holiday apartment right next door to it, one of three holiday flats ideally located where the Sassi (the part of the city you want to visit) meet the newer part of town built over the past few centuries on the flat land at the top (where most of the conveniences such as restaurants, bars and shops are located). 

Our flat in Via Casalnuovo 

I don't normally publish pictures of myself in bed, but this one is just too good to miss! 

The flats, and the hostel, are also ideally located for walkers on the Cammino Materano, because they are right next to the office where you can pick up your Testimonium: certificate of completion of the Cammino Materano!