8 September 2023 - Bari and Matera

September 09, 2023

Having made very good progress on preparing the boat, we took a day off for sightseeing, and hired a car to drive to Matera, about 45 miles away. This is a Unesco World Heritage Site, and one of the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth. There are relics dating back to about 10,000 BC.

The History (thanks to Wikipedia)

Matera lies on the right bank of the Gravina river, whose canyon forms a geological boundary between the hill country of Basilicata (historic Lucania) to the south-west and the Murgia plateau of Apulia to the north-east. The city began as a complex of cave habitations excavated in the softer limestone on the gorge's western, Lucanian face. It took advantage of two streams which flow into the ravine from a spot near the Castello Tramontano, reducing the cliff's angle of drop and leaving a defensible narrow promontory in between. The central high ground, or acropolis, supporting the city's cathedral and administrative buildings, came to be known as Civita, and the settlement districts scaling down and burrowing into the sheer rock faces as the Sassi.

The Sassi consist of around twelve levels spanning the height of 380 m, connected by a network of paths, stairways, and courtyards. The medieval city clings onto the edge of the canyon for its defence and is invisible from the western approach. The tripartite urban structure of Civita and the two Sassi are relatively isolated from each other and survived until the 16th century, when the centre of public life moved outside the walls to the Piazza Sedile in the open plain (the Piano) to the west, followed by the shift of the elite residences to the Piano from the 17th century onwards. By the end of the 18th century, a physical class boundary separated the overcrowded Sassi of the peasants from the new order of their social superiors in the Piano, and geographical elevation came to coincide with status more overtly than before, to the point where the two communities no longer interacted socially.

Yet it was only in the 20th century that the Sassi were declared unfit for modern habitation, and the government relocation of all their inhabitants to new housing in the Piano followed between 1952 and the 1970s. A new law in 1986 opened the path to restoration and reoccupation of the Sassi, this time for the benefit of the wealthy middle class. The recognition of the Sassi, labelled “la città sotterranea” ("the underground city"), together with the rupestrian churches across the Gravina as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in December 1993, assisted in attracting tourism and accelerated the reclamation of the site. In 2019, Matera was declared a European Capital of Culture.

Our Visit

We wandered through the streets and alleyways, climbing up and down the valley sides to visit the sites of interest. There are multi layered rupestrian churches, carved at different times and by different Christian affiliations. Some have frescos dating back to the 14^th century in various states of preservation. After they were abandoned by their creators, some of the churches were taken over to be used as residences. Some of the cave houses has been preserved as a museum pieces, complete with their furnishings. We visited one of about 60 sq meters, where a family of 9 (2 parents and 7 children) lived, with their animals. There was no running water or sanitation. The animals, typically a horse or mule were there for both their protection and to provide heat into the home. It is hard to imagine this being “normal” for people, right up to the mid 1960’s. The city’s population was 30,000 at this time, of which about half lived in the cave houses. Apparently there was great resistance to the forced resettlement of the inhabitants.