Matera is a centuries-old town dug into the pliable rock of Murgia. It was founded over 10,000 years ago and is one of the oldest cities in the world. Matera, the city of Sassi, has grown since prehistoric times as a rock dwelling, embracing an unusual type of houses: caves, where people have been constantly living all through the centuries in a perfect cohabitation of man and nature. The old town is on the elevation, the so-called Civita, along with Sasso Barisano and Sasso Caveoso. Matera took on its peculiar appearance as a rock dwelling in the Middle Ages. There are lots of rock churches there with vestiges of Byzantine-influenced sacred art brought there by monks in the Middle Ages.
[expand title=”Man and nature: the centuries-old tradition of living in a cave”]
Crag, quarry, crypt, cave are the keywords if you want to venture into the extraordinary maze that is the Sassi of Matera. In a natural environment, where water streams and weather have dug ravines, gorges, canyons and dizzy precipices into the crumbling rocks of the Lucana side of Murgia, people chose to live in caves to cope with the need to have a shelter and a home, to protect themselves from weather, to defend themselves from enemies or raiders. This is a perfect example of the way humans adapted to the natural environment, because in this way they could make the most of the local geomorphology and space. Humans lived in extraordinary harmony with the wilderness and turned the natural caves into their homes. Starting from the top of the ravine, eventually renamed Civita, the underground dwellings spread out unevenly, first scattered in groups, following the layers of soft calcarenite rock. Caves have a plain shape with one room, a rectangular layout and a vaulted ceiling. Over time, the prehistoric choice of living in a cave crystallised into Matera’s distinctive form of dwelling, strong and unchangeable, of outstanding cultural and anthropological relevance. No two caves are alike, in size, development and aspect, they follow and cut into the shapes of Sassi and eventually become the backbone of the buildings that are built on top, as settlements that develop both underground and above ground: whenever the rooms dug into the crag can hold the weight of the upper floors, while more layers are built on top of the rocks. In Matera, more than anywhere else in Italy, the houses merge and blur into the landscape. The houses and the ravines blend into each other, both structurally and in the materials. The walls, roofs, floors are made in the same rocks the underground rooms have been dug out of, so they look materially and chromatically colours in their shades of white and grey.[/expand]
[expand title=”The look”]
Matera’s signature appearance plays with contrasts of chaos and harmony. The tangle of streets, alleys, arches and terraces of the old town, where all features are connected with each other in weird, sinuous overlays, resembles an archetypal maze. At least until the dawn of the Modern age, the urban development of Matera did not follow any plan, nor any rational design. The houses at the Sassi were built to meet the local families’ needs with traditional empirical, techniques, with no concern for historical artistic styles or aesthetics. Nevertheless, the result was outstandingly harmonious and sublime. Medieval travellers who visited the town compared it to a star-studded sky. The town’s look came into its own in the Middle Ages, when Matera consisted of the Civita, the dizzy ravine on the rocky spur above, and the two settlements of Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano at the sides. Nowadays, the Sassi are separated from the new town, with its plain, middle-class 19th– and 20th-century architectures.[/expand]
[expand title=”Rupestrian Churches”]
With its over 150 rock churches, often decorated with frescoes or bas-reliefs, Matera is the repository of an outstanding wealth of sacred art that embodies all the historical and cultural seasons it has gone through. The cave-dwelling tradition meant that the places of worship had to adapt to the underground world too. Often, the churches are nave-less or have two naves or one nave and two aisles; sometimes, they are entirely dug into the ground, sometimes they have an added façade, but all of them are as widespread in the area as in the little country villages or along the ways that connect the farmland to town. Churches, monasteries, sanctuaries come in a multitude of styles, from different ages and of different origins. The first rock churches had been influenced by the medieval monastic culture since the VIII century. Latin influences sit next to Greek and Eastern features, as Matera was inhabited by many different populations – Lombard, Normans, Byzantines, Swabians, Angevins – who left their mark on the local art and religion. In the early Middle Ages, especially in the VII-VIII century, when Matera was annexed to the Lombard Duchy of Benevento, Benedictine monks settled in and around Matera, bringing with them the Latin iconography of monastic Christianity. In the Middle Ages, the town was run through by Byzantine-inspired religious cultures (IX-X century): hermits and anchorites fled war in the East and found the perfect place in Matera’s plateau for praying and living life in solitude. The monks dug cells, made reservoirs, turned the rocks into plain but very charming churches, their walls engraved with Greco-Oriental religious features. The Parco Archeologico Storico Naturale delle Chiese Rupestri del Materano or Parco della Murgia Materana is scattered all over the Matera side of Murgia and guards an extraordinary landscape dotted with rock churches and prehistoric settlements, a landscape that is the live soul and the historical proof of the rock-dwelling culture of the Mediterranean regions. The city’s most noteworthy churches are Madonna dell’Idris, Convicinio di Sant’Antonio, Chiesa di Santa Lucia alla Malve at Sasso Caveoso; Chiesa di Sant’Agostino and Chiesa di San Pietro Barisano at Sasso Barisano. The Cathedral and Madonna delle Virtù and San Nicola dei Greci at Civita. Cripta di San Falcione, Chiesa di San Vito, Madonna della Croce, Madonna dei Derelitti, Madonna delle Vergini, Madonna di Monte Verde are out of town.[/expand]