Get the best of Smithsonian magazine by email. The main feature of the façade is the rose window, divided by sixteen small columns. The decoration is mainly from the 18th century Baroque restoration, but recently[when?] Here, they never had a golden age. Ponte, who grew up in the modern part of Matera, which sprawls along the Piano (the “flat”) above the ravine, was one of the first to take advantage of this ready-made real estate. 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Touted as the thing you absolutely must do before visiting the Sassi of Matera (literally meaning stone, but best translated as 'districts'), distracted by a beautiful hot day and an ice-cold beer in Piazzetta Giovanni Pascoli, we somehow managed to miss this - having read more since, it's the one thing we regret from our brief time in Matera. (One of his earliest memories was his father’s return to Matera after migrating to Germany to become a laborer. “Twenty years ago, we were the only ones who were interested in the Sassi,” says artist Mitarotonda. 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. There would be children playing, men gossiping, women shelling peas with their neighbors. “My wife’s family was violently against us living here,” he said. The crapiata is an old recipe hailing from Matera dating to the Roman period. On the opposite side of the ravine, on a plateau called the Murgia, more mysterious caves stare back like vacant eyes. Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Magazine There were also a large number of little superficial canals (rasole[what language is this?]) “The only real problem of the Sassi was economic: It was poverty that was making the Sassi unhealthy.”. 17th Annual Photo Contest Finalists Announced. A sleek stone bath was embedded in the cave’s farthest corner. Give a Gift. Instead, the ancient laneways became overgrown and decrepit, and the Sassi soon gained a reputation for crime, attracting drug dealers, thieves and smugglers. that fed pools and hanging gardens. But Matera may be Europe’s most radical rags-to-riches story. 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. “What you see on the surface is only 30 percent. Matera preserves a large and diverse collection of buildings related to the Christian faith, including a large number of rupestrian churches carved from the calcarenite rock of the region. Renewed vision and investment led to the cave dwellings becoming a noted historic tourism destination, with hotels, small museums and restaurants – and a vibrant arts community. She explained that she had leased it from the city a decade ago, and offered to let us visit. As the capital of the province of Matera, its original settlement lies in two canyons carved by the Gravina River. The town of Matera was founded by the Roman Lucius Caecilius Metellus in 251 BC who called it Matheola. Matera város (közigazgatásilag comune) Olaszország Basilicata régiójában, Matera megyében, a Gravina di Matera partján.. A város nevezetessége a Sassi di Matera, a történelmi központot alkotó barlanglakásokból álló negyedek komplexuma, amely 1993 óta az UNESCO Világörökségének részét képezi. : Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution that Changed World History,The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games and Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped. Many of them are really little more than small caverns, and in some parts of the Sassi a street lies on top of another group of dwellings. Levi’s book caused an uproar in postwar Italy, and the Sassi became notorious as la vergogna nazionale, the disgrace of the nation. “They had been filled with debris.” The cisterns are now being turned into a “soul spa” for meditation. “But he also has a nostalgia for its social life. “It’s like a gold rush here,” Zasa, the guide, says with a laugh. “Matera is one of the oldest living cities in the world in terms of continuity,” Antonio Nicoletti, an urban planner from Matera, told me. “When there was a chance to escape, I took it.”, “My father didn’t tell me about his lost brothers until I was 18,” Antonio confided. The profane insertions such as the navalis wagon and its violent destruction, along with the intimacy and the religious solemnity, suggest this festival shares roots with ancient traditions of other Mediterranean countries. People lived outside in their vicinato, or courtyard, which was like a tiny piazza. This was 100% of all the recorded Matera's in Canada. It dates back to the 13th century and it belongs to the Byzantine school.[15]. However, on further excavation large Roman cisterns were unearthed. : Che, Fidel and the Improbable Revolution that Changed World History, The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Games, Napoleon's Privates: 2500 Years of History Unzipped, Medicinal Plant May Have Evolved Camouflage to Evade Humans, Melting Ice in Norway Reveals Ancient Arrows, The Ten Best STEM Toys to Give as Gifts in 2020. When I spotted the stone facade of a church in the wilderness, it looked like a mirage: Etched into the raw flanks of a cliff, it could only be reached by scrambling across pebbles as slippery as ball bearings. Along with cave hotels, there are now cave restaurants, cave cafés, cave galleries and cave clubs. I still have the scar.” A few paces later, he pointed down to what looked like a hobbit’s house, built below ground level and opening onto a small courtyard beneath the stairs. Donato Rizzi, a painter, recalls discovering the Sassi as a teenager. Matera's bread is a local bread made with durum wheat, dating to the Kingdom of Naples, and typically featuring three incisions, symbolizing the Holy Trinity. By the late 1800s, Matera's cave dwellings became noted for intractable poverty, poor sanitation, meager working conditions, and rampant disease. It’s easy to see why Matera has been chosen to double for ancient Jerusalem in films, including Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ. Because the sheep weighed about 8–10 kg., when they cooked it they invited all the neighbours and they enjoyed dance, music and wine. Územie Matery je osídlené už od paleolitu. When she arrived to the periphery of the city, she got off the wagon and asked farmer to take her message to the bishop. It is a common ritual grown into "Sassi di Matera" and celebrated on 1 August; it is still celebrated. With its solid pillars carved from the rock and a vault height of more than fifteen metres, it is a veritable water cathedral, which is navigable by boat. “I just wanted a place to sneak off for a cigarette with my friends,” he said. In the icy interior, light filtering through a collapse in the ceiling revealed the faded remains of frescoes on the scarred walls. The Sassi are habitations dug into the calcareous rock itself, which is characteristic of Basilicata and Apulia. But why did the government focus on the failures of the last 100 years, and forget that the Sassi had thrived for the previous 9,000?” De Ruggieri asks. Imagine Paleolithic people coming here to find these caves near fresh water, flowers, wild game,” he told me from the terrace of his gallery in the Sassi, which has a panoramic view.