Matera

Matera has gained international fame for its ancient town, the "Sassi di Matera". The Sassi originated in a prehistoric troglodyte settlement, and these dwellings are thought to be among the first ever human settlements in what is now Italy. The Sassi are habitations dug into the calcareous rock itself, which is characteristic of Basilicata and Apulia. Many of them are really little more than small caverns, and in some parts of the Sassi a street lies on top of another group of dwellings. The ancient town grew up on one slope of the rocky ravine created by a river that is now a small stream, and this ravine is known locally as "la Gravina". In the 1950s, as part of a policy to clear the extreme poverty of the Sassi, the government of Italy used force to relocate most of the population of the Sassi to new public housing in the developing modern city.

Until the late 1980s the Sassi was still considered an area of poverty, since its dwellings were, and in most cases still are, uninhabitable and dangerous. The present local administration, however, has become more tourism-orientated, and it has promoted the regeneration of the Sassi as a picturesque touristic attraction with the aid of the Italian government, UNESCO, and Hollywood. Today there are many thriving businesses, pubs and hotels there, and the city is amongst the fastest growing in southern Italy.

• 
• 
  Interior of a cave house
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
  Exterior of a cave church
• 
  Interior of a cave church
• 

Stairways in Matera.

Matera preserves a large and diverse collection of buildings related to the Christian faith, including a large number of rupestrian churches carved from the calcarenite rock of the region.[7] These churches, which are also found in the neighbouring region of Apulia, were listed in the 1998 World Monuments Watch by the World Monuments Fund.

Matera Cathedral (1268–1270) has been dedicated to Santa Maria della Bruna since 1389. Built in an Apulian Romanesque architectural style, the church has a 52 m tall bell tower, and next to the main gate is a statue of the Maria della Bruna, backed by those of Saints Peter and Paul. The main feature of the façade is the rose window, divided by sixteen small columns. The interior is on the Latin cross plan, with a nave and two aisles. The decoration is mainly from the 18th century Baroque restoration, but recently a Byzantine-style 14th-century fresco portraying the Last Judgement has been discovered.

Two other important churches in Matera, both dedicated to the Apostle Peter, are San Pietro Caveoso (in the Sasso Caveoso) and San Pietro Barisano (in the Sasso Barisano). San Pietro Barisano was recently restored in a project by the World Monuments Fund, funded by American Express. The main altar and the interior frescoes were cleaned, and missing pieces of moldings, reliefs, and other adornments were reconstructed from photographic archives or surrounding fragments.[8]

There are many other churches and monasteries dating back throughout the history of the Christian church. Some are simple caves with a single altar and maybe a fresco, often located on the opposite side of the ravine. Some are complex cave networks with large underground chambers, thought to have been used for meditation by the rupestrian and cenobitic monks.

Ferdinandea Fountain

Matera was built above a deep ravine called Gravina of Matera that divides the territory into two areas. Matera was built such that it is hidden, but made it difficult to provide a water supply to its inhabitants. Early dwellers invested tremendous energy in building cisterns and systems of water channels.

The largest cistern has been found under Piazza Vittorio Veneto. With its solid pillars carved from the rock and a vault height of more than fifteen metres, it is a veritable water cathedral, which is navigable by boat. Like other cisterns in the town, it collected rainwater that was filtered and flowed in a controlled way to the Sassi.

There were also a large number of little superficial canals that fed pools and hanging gardens. Moreover, many bell-shaped cisterns in dug houses were filled up by seepage. Later, when the population increased, many of these cisterns were turned into houses and other kinds of water-harvesting systems were realised.

Some of these more recent facilities have the shape of houses submerged in the earth.[9]

The Murgia National Park (Parco della Murgia Materana), a regional park established in 1990, includes the territory of the Gravina di Matera and about 150 rock churches scattered along the slopes of the ravines and the plateau of the Murgia. This area, inhabited since prehistoric times, still preserves stationing dating back to the Paleolithic, such as the Grotta dei pipistrelli (cave of the bats), and to the Neolithic.[10][11] The symbol of the park is the lesser kestrel.

The San Giuliano Regional Reserve, a protected area established in 2000, includes Lake San Giuliano, an artificial reservoir created by the damming of the Bradano river, and the river sections upstream and downstream of it.[12]

Colle di Timmari, a green lung located about 15 km from the city, dominates the Bradano valley and the San Giuliano lake. It is a pleasant residential area, and on the top of the hill there is the small Sanctuary of San Salvatore, dating back to 1310, and an important archaeological area.

• 
  Gravina di Matera
• 
  Murgia National Park with prehistoric caves and rupestrian churches
• 
  Horses in the Murgia National Park
• 
• 
• 
  Saracen village
• 
  Cave church of San Luca alla Selva
• 
  San Giuliano Regional Reserve

• 
  The Tramontano Castle
• 
  Palazzo Lanfranchi
• 
  Auditorium of the culture centre Casa Cava

The Tramontano Castle, begun in the early 16th century by Gian Carlo Tramontano, Count of Matera, is probably the only other structure that is above ground of any great significance outside the sassi. However, the construction remained unfinished after his assassination in the popular riot of 29 December 1514. It has three large towers, while twelve were probably included in the original design. During some restoration work in the main square of the town, workers came across what were believed to be the main footings of another castle tower. However, on further excavation large Roman cisterns were unearthed. Whole house structures were discovered where one can see how the people of that era lived.

The Palazzo dell'Annunziata is a historical building on the main square, seat of Provincial Library.

Pane di Matera

Crapiata

Strazzate

The cuisine of Matera is a typical "cucina povera" (peasant food) from Southern Italy. It features a sort of blend of Basilicata and Apulia's cuisines being in a border area between the two regions. Some specialties are "peperoni cruschi", a sweet and dry pepper variety very popular in Basilicata, and "Pane di Matera", a type of bread recognizable for its intense flavour and conical shape, granted Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status.[13] Matera produces a homonym wine which bear the Denominazione di origine controllata (DOC) designation.[14]

Some dishes from the local cuisine include:

• Crapiata, a peasant soup with chickpeas, beans, broad beans, wheat, lentils, cicerchie and potatoes. An old recipe dating to the Roman period, it is a common ritual grown into "Sassi di Matera" and celebrated on 1 August[15]
• Orecchiette alla materana, baked orecchiette-pasta seasoned with tomatoes, lamb, mozzarella and Pecorino cheese
• Strascinati con cime di rapa e peperoni cruschi, a pasta dish with turnip greens and peperoni cruschi
• Cialedda, a frugal recipe with stale bread as a main ingredient. It can be "calda" (hot) with egg, bay leaves, garlic and olives or "fredda" (cold) with tomatoes and garlic.[16]
• Pignata, sheep meat with potatoes, onion, tomatoes and celery cooked in the "pignata", a terracotta pot shaped like an amphora.[17]
• Strazzate, crumbly biscuits prepared with egg, almonds and coffee

Enrique Irazoqui and Pier Paolo Pasolini in Matera, on the set of The Gospel According to St. Matthew, 1964

Because of the ancient primeval-looking scenery in and around the Sassi, it has been used by filmmakers as the setting for ancient Jerusalem. The following famous biblical period motion pictures were filmed in Matera:

• Pier Paolo Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964)
• Bruce Beresford's King David (1985)
• Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004)
• Abel Ferrara's Mary (2005)
• Catherine Hardwicke's The Nativity Story (2006)
• Cyrus Nowrasteh's The Young Messiah (2016)
• Timur Bekmambetov's Ben-Hur (2016)
• Garth Davis's Mary Magdalene (2018)

Other movies filmed in the city include:

• Mario Volpe's Le due sorelle (1950)
• Alberto Lattuada's La lupa (1953)
• Roberto Rossellini's Garibaldi (1961)
• Luigi Zampa's Roaring Years (1962)
• Brunello Rondi's Il demonio (1963)
• Nanni Loy's Made in Italy (1965)
• Francesco Rosi's More Than a Miracle (1967)
• Lucio Fulci's Don't Torture a Duckling (1972)
• Roberto Rossellini's Anno uno (1974)
• Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Allonsanfàn (1974)
• Fernando Arrabal's The Tree of Guernica (1975)
• Carlo Di Palma's Qui comincia l'avventura (1975)
• Francesco Rosi's Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979)
• Francesco Rosi's Three Brothers (1981)
• Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's The Sun Also Shines at Night (1990)
• Giuseppe Tornatore's The Star Maker (1995)
• John Moore's The Omen (2006)
• Liu Jiang's Let's Get Married (2015)
• Matteo Rovere's Italian Race (2016)
• Patty Jenkins's Wonder Woman (2017)
• Cary Joji Fukunaga's No Time to Die (2021)

Matera appears in the music videos for the songs "Sun Goes Down" (2014) by Robin Schulz[18] and "Spit Out the Bone" (2016) by Metallica.[19]

Matera Cathedral

The origins of the festival are not well known, because its story has changed while being handed down from generation to generation. One of these legends says that a woman asked a farmer to go up on his wagon to accompany her to Matera. When she arrived to the periphery of the city, she got off the wagon and asked farmer to take her message to the bishop. In this message she said she was Christ's mother. The bishop, the clergy and the folk rushed to receive the Virgin, but they found a statue. So the statue of Madonna entered in the city on a triumphal wagon. Another legend talks about a destruction of the wagon: Saracens besiege Matera and the citizens, to protect the painting of Madonna, hid it on a little wagon. They then destroyed the wagon to keep the Saracens from taking the painting.[20]

Different hypotheses are attributed to the name of Madonna della Bruna : the first says that the noun derives from the Lombard high-medieval term brùnja (armor/protection of knights). So the name might mean Madonna of defense. Another hypothesis is that the name comes from herbon, a city of Giudea, where the Virgin went to visit her cousin Elisabetta. A third hypothesis says that the name comes from the colour of the Virgin's face. The profane insertions such as the navalis wagon and its violent destruction, along with the intimacy and the religious solemnity, suggest this festival shares roots with ancient traditions of other Mediterranean countries. For example, in Greek culture, wedding parties also celebrate with a triumphal wagon (ships on wheels richly designed).[21] The Madonna's sculpture is located in a case in the transept of the cathedral dedicated to her, where there is also a fresco that portrays her. It dates back to the 13th century and it belongs to the Byzantine school.[22]