© Jeff Matthews entry
Aug. 2003, update 2014
The Sassi of
Matera
Palimpsests were medieval docments
that were erased and then reused a number of time in
order to preserve precious paper. The erasures were
not perfect and traces of older writing often showed
though, building up, layer by layer, a kind of
ghostly record of all that had gone before. In a
sense, most of Southern Italy could be called an
archaeological palimpsest.The region of Basilicata (or Lucania) is a case in point. There are still remnants of the ditch villages of pre-European peoples from 8,000 years ago. On top of this there are signs of early Indo-European peoples such as the Oenotrians and the early Greeks of Magna Grecia who displaced them in the 8th century, b.c. This is mixed with signs of Italic tribes such as the Lucanians, Oscans, and Samnites, all absorbed by the civilization which was ultimately to leave its own indelible imprint across three continents: the Romans. Then came the Lombards, Byzantine Greeks, the Normans, the Angevin French, the great Spanish realm of Charles V, (on whose empire "the sun never set"), and so forth down to our own day when the area was taken up into a united Italy.
Matera is one of the two provinces of
Basilicata (the Italian region adjacent to Campania in
the south); the capital city of the province is also
named Matera. The old part of this city of 50,000
inhabitants is known the world over for its ancient
urban complex, the Sassi. Of all the kinds of
dwellings we humans have built over the ages —our huts,
shanties, castles, hovels— nothing quite arrests the
attention as the sassi of Matera. Built on
—into, really— both sides of a gigantic limestone
outcropping overlooking a deep ravine, the sassi
(meaning, simply, "stones") are a labyrinth of
cave-dwellings. The caves, themselves, were lived in
without interruption from the Neolithic (about 10
thousand years ago) until the 1960s and are thus likely
to be the oldest continually inhabited human settlement
in Italy. As "The Sassi and the Park of the Rupestrian
Churches of Matera," the site has been inscribed on the
UNESCO World Heritage list since 1993. From the UNESCO
description:
This is the most outstanding, intact example of a troglodyte settlement in the Mediterranean region, perfectly adapted to its terrain and ecosystem. The first inhabited zone dates from the Palaeolithic, while later settlements illustrate a number of significant stages in human history. Matera is in the southern region of Basilicata.
The sassi came into their own
between the 8th and 13th centuries AD, when the caves
became a refuge for groups of monks persecuted in the
Iconoclast controversy that shook the Byzantine Empire.
In Matera, these refugees were isolated and safe in a
no-man's land between waning Byzantine power further
south and unstable Lombard
influence to the north. The monks moved into the caves
and built halls, sanctuaries and chapels. Later, many of
the cave dwellings were taken over by peasants as homes
for themselves and quarters for their animals. Over the
last millennium, houses have grown organically out of the
original fissures and caves; steps, roofs and balconies
have been added; everything is arrayed in an irregular
jumble, layer upon jagged layer, roof to wall, balcony
to doorstep, all so helter-skelter that the overall
impression is that of a beehive built by bees who don't
like following orders.
On
a more sombre note, writer Carlo Levi, upon seeing
the sassi for the first time, said he was
reminded of his childhood visions of what Dante's Inferno
must have looked like: the descending layers
spiralling down into darkness and who knows what
awful perdition and, when the sassi were
still inhabited, the thousands of candles glimmering
in the small windows at night might indeed have
looked like fires burning in hell. Levi's infernal
vision notwithstanding, others have seen quite the
opposite in Matera. The strange combination of age
and agelessness about Matera lends it a Biblical
quality, and here is where, in 1964, director Pier
Paolo Pasolini filmed his life of Christ, The
Gospel According to Matthew and where, in
2004, Mel Gibson filmed The Passion
of the Christ.
The
entire complex is
perhaps the most outstanding example anywhere in the
world of spontaneous rural architecture, yet the
problems of great numbers of people living at such
close quarters were enormous. There have been
utopian claims that the 20,000 inhabitants living in
the sassi at mid-20th-century were a unique
example of peasants, landowners, shepherds,
craftsmen, merchants and laborers living in social
harmony. The modern Italian state did not see things
quite that way. It saw an infant mortality rate of
43%(!) and a medieval folk magic that treated ills
by sprinkling the blood of a freshly slaughtered
chicken on the patient.
Laws were passed during the 1950s
to alleviate the overcrowded and unhygienic living
conditions. This meant moving most of the people
out. New quarters were built in the town of Matera,
itself, and the sassi have now essentially
become empty shells, except for a small and strictly
limited number of inhabitants. The area has become,
as well it should, an object of tourist interest,
and this has led to an ongoing project to keep the
houses, churches, villas, the small squares and long
flights of stairs of the sassi from
deteriorating. As noted above, the sassi
have been added to the UNESCO World Heritage list of
cultural artifacts worth preserving at all cost.
Aside from the houses, themselves,
there are in the area a great number of
ancient cave churches displaying Orthodox as
well as Catholic ornamentation. Time and
vandals have ravaged them to a certain extent,
but some original Greek icons on cave walls
are still clearly visible and venerable. Even
traces of prehistoric habitation can be found
within some of the caves.
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If you want to actually buy one of the sassi
dwellings and restore it, you can do that, too, and get a
50% subsidy from the state! On the other hand, if you just
want to visit for a day, it's only a few hours south of
Naples on a fast autostrada.
I had a kind
letter some years back from Elizabeth Jennings of
Matera, who told me that "...A goodly portion of the
Sassi are now restored and the area is a beehive of
activity, particularly in summer. Restaurants, bars,
pizzerias, salsa clubs...the streets
hum with the sound of foot traffic and
voices...concerts and plays...and a plan to convert a
huge grotto into the Casa Grotta, into a big cultural
center. The human overlay is very modern and young."
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