City of stone

Name that style

It was day 13 of the tour (counting the travel day). We were getting a bit stretched. When I write about the free time we had and took, it seems like a lot, but most of the tour was full and briskly paced.

We had a long drive ahead of us to get to our final stopping point. I wasn't up for bus games, so I put in the buds and listened to music on my phone. Lots of agricultural countryside, and red poppies splashed onto green grass fields. Somewhere in there we were pulled over at a police checkpoint to verify everything was in proper order on the tour coach (show of power, really). We crossed into the region of Basilicata near the sea and then drove inland and upward to Matera.

Sassi across the ravines

Basilicata, the instep of the boot, is a rather obscure region with only two provinces, Potenza and Matera. I don't see a lot about Basilicata, not like Calabria or Puglia or Campania or even Molise, neighbouring regions. Knowing so little about the region and nothing about Matera, I was thinking this was basically a drive-through on our way to Puglia. Instead, it was one of the most profound experiences of the tour.

It did not begin profoundly. We arrived in the modern city of Matera, a perfectly fine city, then walked with a local guide into the baroque city, a perfectly fine baroque city. The guide was extolling the architectural features of this baroque city, and yes, it looked great. But we had seen a lot of baroque architecture. I took pictures, but I guess I was past being excited by baroque style at that point. Plus there were molti ragazzi ovunque.

Sassi up the slope

And then, behind the baroque city, at the eastern edge of Matera, we came to the Sassi, a city of caves. I had never seen a place like it before. Sassi means "stones." It's  made up of two great ravines, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, with caves dug into the rock and clay on all sides. Later, houses were built to extend the caves. It's a jumble of caves and buildings and streets extending deep into the ravines, reached by steep streets and long staircases. There is evidence of continuous habitation in and near the ravines for 9000 years. Even now that puts me in awe.

Before we descended, we fueled up at La Grotta della Petrarola, purveyor of prodotti tipici lucani (Lucania is an older name for Basilicata). Lunch that day consisted of samples of their wares. They were excellent quality products, just not quite enough quantity. We must have got used to all those big lunches. They sold the group plenty of prodotti tipici for later (taralli al pomodoro secco, yum).

Far side of the ravine

Then, with a different local guide, we descended into the Sassi themselves. The guide did a great job giving us the history and background of what we were seeing. As late as the 1950s, people were still living in the caves as their ancestors had done, huddled in windowless holes with animals sharing the space and providing heat. There were more remote caves on the far edge of the second ravine, some once used by hermits, as well as tiny churches. The Sassi is loaded with churches, a hundred or more, many no longer in use.

In Carlo Levi's memoir Christ Stopped at Eboli, Levi's physician sister describes what she saw in the Sassi in 1935. She said she was used to working in impoverished urban conditions but was unprepared for the level of destitution she saw among the inhabitants of the Sassi. In the 1950s, the area was considered a national shame. The grey day played into the profound sadness of the place as it had once been, a place where for countless generations people grew up and grew old without any hope of their lives changing for the better.

Not one church but in fact two

Today, the Sassi is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. As is the way of things, it's even becoming hip. Tourists can eat and drink and stay there. And yet the Sassi retains much of what has long been there. If you see a chimney popping out of the surface you're walking on, you know that someone's house is below. The streets will always be steep and winding, and there will be stairs. Much of the infrastructure will remain embedded in the bones of the land.

We visited the Casa Grotta nei Sassi di Matera, a model cave house. It seemed...not bad? But it was a cleaned-up, somewhat idealized cave, and not cohabited by animals. Also lit with electricity. We also went into a cave church nearby called Chiesa rupestre di Sant'Agostino al Casalnuovo (rupestre means "rocky").

The untouched-by-time look of the Sassi make them a popular film location. Sweetie remembered that a car chase from the James Bond film No Time to Die was filmed there. So were Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew and Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

I don't know why the Sassi affected me so deeply. I felt like I was immersed in a very long history, a place where people lived for millennia before Phoenicians and Greeks and Romans came, and a history that was often painful.

Cavernous kitchen

Shortly after I got home, I borrowed Christ Stopped at Eboli from the library and read it in about a week. It was an immersive read. (The memoir is mostly about the villages of Gagliano and Grassano where the author was internally exiled for being antifascist, as penetrating as the story of the Sassi di Matera.)

Before we left Matera, our amazing and wonderful trip guru bought delicious margherita focaccia from the local guide's favourite place. I might have inhaled one piece and then eaten one more that was going begging. The salt level was perfect.

I don't remember how long the drive was from Matera to the Masseria di Santa Teresa in Monopoli, Puglia. The arrival was certainly memorable. Our indominable driver was seriously challenged getting the coach through the front gate and past scratchy untrimmed olive trees (amendments were later made). Apparently the staff didn't realize we would be arriving in such a large coach.

Masseria means farmhouse. The place was a curious mix of modern and rustic, very eco-minded but not always in a way that worked. The restaurant did work, however, and the delicious vegetarian meal was a harbinger of great food to come.