Matera!

 Thursday afternoon we drove to the Basilicata region to the town of Matera, a remarkable complex of caves and dwellings built into (rather, carved into) the hillside.  Archeologists who have studied this area have found evidence of human populations having lived basically since the Neolithic period.  Please notice that I am resisting the urge to begin a sentence with, “Back in caveman days….”  In this video you can see that it is a canyon and that on one side you can see caves, on the other is a very dense palimpsest of dwellings of different styles from different peoples, civilizations and time periods.  Matera has been occupied by Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Saracens, Aragonese (Spanish), etc. just like the rest of southern Italy, essentially.  But in the beginning: cave men. 

During the middle ages, churches and a monetary were built and remain today.  But it is a windblown, completely hostile climate and no place for the timid.  This church is a testament to that.  Notice the pock marks on the stone. 

The limestone used for the construction of most of Matera is local.  Limestone is porous, and so it actually helped the early (and later) cave dwellers to collect water into underground cisterns.  We went into a cave dwelling and you could see all the parts of the home, where they cooked, where they kept the animals, where they hung up their clothes, tools, etc.  I’m sorry, but it was a pretty wretched existence: stinky, moldy, humid.

In fact, Matera was evacuated in 1952 because it had become a cesspit of malaria, typhoid, poverty, overall serious wretchedness.  It was abandoned until the 80s when someone realized how remarkable the place is.  Really.  People have lived in this valley since Neolithic times.  A little clean up, a little invitation for people to reclaim ancestral homes, a little marketing, a little missive to UNESCO and boom!:  In 1993 Matera becomes a UNESCO World Heritage site and in 2019, a European Capital of Culture. 

These photos do not capture how magical it is.  How baked by the sun, buffeted by the elements.  Its permanence.  I was very moved by it. 

(And on another note, parts of well-known movies have been filmed here: the last James Bond with Daniel Craig, Wonder Woman, the remake of Ben Hur, scenes from Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.)