Otranto to Matera….an incredible riches to rags to riches story

October 27th 

On the road again on another sunny day and we are driving to Matera some 225 kilometers from Otranto.

We had originally planned to overnight here but decided to stay an extra day after we had read some travel blogs about this town.

On the way, Geeps was up to her old tricks and took us on some back roads which while ensuring a longer drive gave us a chance to drop down and “dip our toes ” in the Ionian Seas…

…as well as looking at some truly old olive groves…

Some 20 of Italy’s 150 million olive trees, mostly in the region of Puglia, which used to contribute up to 50% of Italy’s total annual olive oil production have been decimated by Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterium that slowly chokes trees to death. To date science has not been able to find an antidote…it is quite sad to see so many large grey olive groves, which have withstood so much over time but are now dead due to a current ailment. We have seen similar ravages with pine beetle infestations in the forests of British Columbia.

A nice drive and we arrive in Matera around 14:00, for a change we are staying at a Bed and Breakfast, Donna & Leonora B&B, located on a Piazzetta in the ZTL. However, we can drive in and drop off our luggage (very convenient)…no one is at the address but no worries we call them, and in 5 minutes the host’s son arrives and welcomes us. After checking us in he gave us some suggestions as to what would be good to visit in the remaining daylight hours and drove with me to find a  parking spot, eventually finding a free one at the train station, about a 10-minute walk from the B&B.

Matera is claimed to be the third-oldest continually inhabited settlement in the world (after Aleppo and Jericho), the southern Italian city has been home to someone for over 8,000 years. In 1993 the town was granted UNESCO World Heritage Site status as “the most outstanding, intact example of a troglodyte settlement in the Mediterranean region.” Then the city received the European Capital of Culture designation in 2019. This recognition ignited tourist interest in this city which is now evidenced by an ever-increasing tourist trade….but there is more to this story …

We have a few hours of light and start reconnoitering the Centro Historico…

There is a self-guided tour of the cisterns discovered in 1991 which we take following metal walkways through an enormous 16th-century cistern complex dug by hand under the main plaza. It has a capacity of 5 million liters, with chambers some 50 feet deep and 240 feet long, and was able to service the needs of the town throughout the year.

If you stop and think how seriously water was considered so long ago it boggles the mind how far ahead of us these people were at least in this sense. It brings to mind the water shortages and restrictions we have in our hometown of Sechelt yet we live in a temperate rainforest !!!

Then onwards to the Duomo:

We round off the touring day for with an overview of the Sasso Barisano:

A nice dinner at a local osteria and it is bedtime, a very interesting day and we are quite excited about touring the town tomorrow.

October 28th 

The next morning promises another great day, after a good all-you-can-eat breakfast the host sits down with us and maps out the main sites of the city to optimize our touring day…these folks are very professional, organized, and personable. The wife and son speak good English which of course is an added bonus for us.

Our host suggested a visit to Casa Noha ….to introduce us to what makes Matera special.

The house we visited was donated by two Sassi families to maintain their history …the town authorities took this a step further and created a movie which is shown in three segments projected onto the walls of three separate rooms of the house…… it is a complex story and I will try to summarize the thrust of the movie in a few words: 

Located in the instep of the Italian boot, the town has always been an isolated, forgotten part of Basilicata, among the least populated, least visited and least understood regions of Italy.

Even in the 19th century, few travelers ventured through its arid, desolate landscapes, which were known to be full of briganti, or brigands. The rare adventurers who did stumble upon Matera were mystified by the upside-down world of the Sassi, where, at their peak, 16,000 people lived one above the other, with palazzi and chapels mixed in among cave houses, and where cemeteries were actually built above the church roofs. 

In 1945 Carlo Levi published his memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, about his year of political exile in Basilicata under the Fascists. Levi painted a vivid portrait of a forgotten rural world that had, since the unification of Italy in 1870, sunk into desperate poverty. The town’s prehistoric cave dwellings had by then become “dark holes” riddled with filth and disease, where barnyard animals were kept in dank corners, chickens ran across the dining room tables, and infant mortality rates were horrendous, thanks to rampant malaria, trachoma, and dysentery.

The memoir cast light on the subject leading the Italian Prime Minister to denounce it as the “shame of Italy” and a mass evacuation of the Sassi took place, leaving a vast abandoned city in its wake. The entire population of roughly 16,000 people, mostly peasants, and farmers, were relocated from the Sassi to new housing projects in an ill-conceived government program, leaving it an empty shell….many years later a dedicated group of young, educated Materians started to reconstitute the town while retaining the history, culture, and architecture of this town which culminated in the Matera of today.

It was a gripping and heart-wrenching story without any hint of commercialization and we were really glad we started the morning with this visit as we could then view everything we saw thereafter through the lens of history and perspective. If anyone reading this blog intends to travel to Matera visiting Casa Noha would lend context to their visit as it did to our meanderings…

We then walk down, up, and around the Sasso Barisano:

Over the years, the group working on resurrecting Matera identified over 150 cave churches, some of which had been turned into stables by shepherds with their flocks. A number are now open to the public below is one such example (unfortunately two of the most interesting had reconstruction going on around them preventing us from visiting them):

A few more pics from the Sasso Barisano…

Refreshed after lunch we next took on the Sasso Caveoso …with the Santa Maria de Idris Church carved into the rock (overview below)…

While much has been accomplished as we walk along the cliff side we can see there are still many cave homes with steel grates awaiting new owners/entrepreneurs.

On the opposite side of the ravine, on a plateau called the Murgia, more mysterious caves stare back at us like like vacant eyes.

After dinner we have a last walk around this fascinating and enduring town and hope that it will not become over touristed in the coming years…so see it now before it becomes crazy…