Matera is an extraordinary millennia-old cave settlement in Basilicata, the sister province to Puglia, that once housed up to 30,000 inhabitants. Many caves have been in continuous habitation for centuries while others lie deserted.
Built into the hillsides of two sheer ravines (each side called a sassi) out of soft tufa rock, there is diversity of housing from decorative pillar-fronted to simple one-room caverns.
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| Sasso Barisono, Matera |
As the entire layout and infrastructure of the town has being etched into the rock visualising how people lived here over the centuries does not require leaps of imagination. The plateau above offers sweeping aerial views.
Since 1993 Matera has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site as it is one of the most intact examples of prehistoric cave-based settlements in the world. See the UNESCO description.
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| How it all began: a basic cave across the valley gives an indication of what the earliest dwellings would have looked like |
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| More decorative housing style |
While Matera was for a long time an impressive, picturesque settlement with a sophisticated use of land management, population expansion from the 18th Century meant life grew much darker for the peasant class.
The houses on the surface of the village had caves underneath them intended for storage. As the population expanded families moved into these windowless spaces, producing crowded, unsanitary conditions that were a breeding-ground for the scourge of Italy’s south: malaria.
Until the 1950s – the same decade that Italy became a founding member of the powerful European Union – the infant mortality rate was 50% at Matera, and people were living more or less like this:
“I saw children sitting on doorsteps, in the dirt while the sun heat down on them, with their eyes half-closed and their eyelids red and swollen; flies crawled across the lids, but the children stayed quite still, without raising a hand to brush them away; they seemed not even to feel them. …I saw other children with the wizened faces of old men, their bodies reduced by starvation almost to skeletons, their heads crawling with lice, and covered with scabs. Most of them had enormous dilated stomachs and faces yellow and worn with malaria.”
That description of life in Matera in 1939 comes from Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi, a political exile from Genoa. This book helped to expose and publicise the conditions.
In the 1950s most of the population of the sassi were relocated to new housing estates that make up the new town.
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| Example of a cave interior (at Casa-Grotte di Vico Solitario) |
This was as the whole of Italy was experiencing major industrialisation and sharp improvements in living standards during ‘the economic miracle’ of the 1960s. Hunger in Italy disappeared for the first time in centuries and malaria was declared eradicated in 1969.
People are returning to live in the cave houses in greater numbers now, tourism is on the increase, and there are even upmarket hotels operating in restored cave dwellings.
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| Room with a past: a few boutique hotels are starting to open in Matera |
It’s definitely worth visiting the cave Casa-Grotte di Vico Solitario for an experience of cave life – it was a home originally excavated in the 17th Century and used up until the ‘50s. It’s dominated by a single dresser, a loom and a very high double bed – plus room for a donkey.
One other fact: Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ was filmed near Matera.
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| Refurbished cave: Casa-Grotte di Vico Solitario |
Best food moment: Altamura bread
Altamura is a town 30 minutes from Matera, in the province of Puglia. Pane di Altamura has had EU protected designation of origin (DOP) status since 2003. The town famously forced its McDonalds to close due to lack of demand (a story that became a 2009 film called Focaccia Blues).
We arrived at 1.30pm on a Sunday, probably the worst time of the week to look for an open bakery. So we didn’t purchase the classic white bread that is cooked for 3 hours and has a thick crust and dusty top.
But we did see a kitchen just about to close that specialised in all kinds of local dishes to take away. So we had focaccia and some antipasti items to stuff in it, including roast peppers, aubergine and a wild greens frittata.
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| Focaccia and fillings from Pancotto in Altamura |
Also what I thought was a baked pasta dish but turned out to be thin slices of aubergines and artichokes in a very thin batter, which had been cooled before pressing into a tomato sauce and baking. It was sublime. The kitchen was Pancotto [Italian language site] and the address is Via Bari 19/A Altamura.
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