There are few cities like Matera.
I’ve visited many of the famous and grand cities of Europe and written copiously. So, what makes Matera, Italy, in the province of Puglia so special? It is the third oldest city in the world, after Aleppo, Syria and Jericho. Jericho is in the West Bank, taken by Israel in the six-day war, but later given back to Palestinian control.
Sassi di Matera has had a tumultuous history, with wars and conquests over centuries. I could give you a list, but the thing that really stands out is that Sassi di Matera – the old part of the city - has been inhabited by humans for perhaps 9000 years. The first folk were stone-age troglodytes, meaning they lived in multitudinous caves lining the sides of a river, which is now a stream at the bottom of a deep gorge.
But, since few of us can identify with troglodytes, the more modern history of the city goes like this.
With modernity came improvements. Cisterns to collect rainwater are under many of the houses that were built into and around the caves. Today in Sassi di Matera, it’s no longer possible to actually visualize that caves are there. White colored stones held together by mortar frame the caves, providing more comfort and obscuring what lies beneath. Streets paved with stones run everywhere.
We found one home that is a museum cave-house and shows how people lived right up until the early 1950s. It was a peasant community, with most work done in the fields as laborers and shepherds.
The museum interested me because of the extent of the cave and how different hollows expressed the division of labor. Improved cave homes were in many ways small and private factories, with rooms where leather was tanned and medicine was made and food was cooked. Other rooms had spinning wheels and looms, or blacksmith equipment.
The Catholic Church held much of the town’s real estate. You can still see hewn stone over many of the doorways that once signified church property.
Poverty was also rampant, possibly because the rulers at the time established a law benefiting large landowners. Property was left to the eldest son, and prevented him from dividing it and selling off smaller chunks. This was unlike the north of Italy where large estates could be broken up, leading to arable land being more equitably divided.
By the 1950s, poverty was an epidemic in Matera and in 1952, the Italian government, in an effort to deal with what was then considered dire living conditions, forcibly moved upwards of 16,000 residents to other places. With the city deserted, brigands and smugglers moved in to bring back the banditry that had existed a century before.
Italy as a united country has existed a relatively short time, hence the peculiarities and differences of older laws in the north, south, and central areas. Here is an interesting, progressive map that show how Italy slowly united from 1829 onward.
Click on the colorful map on the right hand side, about half way down.
What was life like in the ‘Sassi’ in the more recent past? Antonio Niccoleti’s father lived there and had strong memories of the place he called home.
“My father has some very dark memories of the Sassi. But he also has nostalgia for its social life. People lived outside in their vicinato, or courtyard, which was like a tiny piazza. There would be children playing, men gossiping, and women shelling peas with their neighbors. They helped each other in every difficulty.”
But as with many other places in Italy, Sassi di Matera’s age and history eventually saved it. Little by little, men with foresight saw the future as a tourist opportunity, and moved in to rehabilitate the old city. Now the old section, Sassi di Matera is once again populated and seems to be thriving, with the old section of Sassi connected to the new city of Matera.
Wander the streets of the old city and you’ll find shops and homes and all the things that make a city live and breath. Stroll farther, to the cliff overlooking the stream and you’ll have a distant glimpse of many of the caves used as home thousands of years ago.
Just yesterday, I watched birds pecking for food in our garden and it occurred to me that humans were once just like the birds, with their days spend searching for food, and the difference between life and death a precarious, day to day struggle.
Sometimes we need to look back, not only to the times we lived through, but to how our forefathers lived and even beyond the time of written history. By looking backward, we suddenly appreciate how far humans have come from the days of the troglodytes, when everyday living was a simple struggle for survival.
For me, Matera was a wonderful place to take that backward glance. And afterwards, when I sat in a comfortable seat on a train taking us back to Bari, I reflected on the relative luxury of our modern world. The struggle for living is for many of us, not the struggle of our ancestors. I won’t step off the train in Bari, knowing I’ll have to sharpen my stone tipped spear if I want supper, or trek up and down a steep hillside for a drink of water.
No, I’ll simply go to a nice bistro, order a variety of dishes, sip some delicious wine, pay the check and go back to my very comfortable hotel.
As I said, sometimes to appreciate today, you have to look back…sometimes thousands of years back. Matera.
