Sassi – Where man meets art and culture.
Matera Sassi
The first settlement in Matera dates back a long way. Palaeolithic findings and Neolithic and Bronze Age underground settlements have been uncovered. The original town centre is the Civitas, overlooked by the cathedral. To either side lie two karstic basins that are home to the Sassi districts of Caveoso and Barisano that Unesco inscribed on their World Heritage List in 1993.
Gattini and Volpe bear witness to previous Grecian and Roman settlements.
In the 6th century Matera was invaded by the Goths. After them came the Lombards who fought it out over the centuries with the Byzantines. As a result of all these invasions in the 130 years between 867 and 994, the town was destroyed and rebuilt three times. From the 10th century onwards the region became home to numerous religious houses (stone churches, convents, monasteries). The town expanded beyond its original boundaries of the Civitas.
Matera came under Angevin dominion in the period between the 12th and 13th centuries. The town was later to be ruled by some of the leading landowners, including the Orsini del Balzos, Sanseverinos, etc. Matera was then taken over by the Aragon dynasty. In the 15th and 16th centuries, there was a large influx of Albanians and Serbo-Croats compelled to flee their countries by the invading Turks.
The Aragon rulers then sold the town to Count Giancarlo Tramontano, but his heavy-handed taxation regime caused the populace to rise up and kill him in 1514. Work on the castle he had ordered was thus left unfinished.
Sold and ransomed many times, Matera was chosen in 1663 as the headquarters of the Regia Udienza in Basilicata, which position it occupied until 1806. The town then followed the fortunes of Southern Italy until the unification of Italy. Since 1927 it has been a provincial capital. Matera was awarded a Silver Medal for its uprisings against the Fascists on 21st September 1943.
Do not miss the Sassi, the 155 cliff top churches throughout the region, the Parco della Murgia Materana, the plains with their 17th century churches, the various art galleries, “Ridola” Museum, and the historic centre.
The Sassi
The Sassi, a story of rediscovery
Il Convento di Sant’Agostino nel Sasso Barisano
The Murgia Materana is a slightly undulating, bleak limestone plateau with Mediterranean maquis and copse woods. Its most striking feature is the sudden appearance of a deep gorge (70/80 m, 230/260 ft), through which a torrent runs. This is the so-called “Gravina di Matera.”
The walls of this gully – and other, smaller caves – have been home over thousands of years to various forms of civilisation. From the troglodyte villages of the Neolithic period to the diverse Eastern-style cave dwelling habitats of the 8th – 10th centuries or the fortified Norman/Swabian citadels (11th – 13th centuries). Not forgetting the usual Renaissance expansion during the 15th and 16th centuries, or the striking and unforeseeable changes to town layouts practised during the Baroque period (17th and 18th centuries).
It all led to a complex town layout with buildings piled on top of one another and over any available spaces or holes, roads becoming rooftops and water collection perfected in a system of channels and reservoirs. Rural social customs found such a system ideal for their feelings of mutual aid.
Such are the Sassi di Matera – the oldest part of town. A breathtaking town plan. The result of a centuries-long anthropomorphisation of the most inhospitable type of land anyone could hope never to find. This was the result of centuries of living in caves and then a more civilised type of town with its “European culture.”
Between the 19th and 20th centuries, the Sassi districts underwent a slow decline, and were lived in by the poorest elements of society (16,000 in 1950). Frightful social and health conditions were the norm.
These impossible conditions during the last century left people no choice but to go and live in the caves. Carlo Levi understood this well in his novel “Christ stopped at Eboli,” which shone a spotlight on the complete abandonment of the area, although he has never been back since. Under the terms of the Transfer Planning Law of 1952, the Ministry of Public Works, Department of Agriculture and Forests and the Treasury Department ordered the eviction of residents in the Sassi, who were forcibly moved to specially built new homes in the suburbs. This dramatic solution to the terrible social and health conditions (but not to urban decay, which was to see Jerry-built housing increase) would later have its effects on society and the town’s own feelings of identity.
The recovery of the ancient town and its identity was the main aim of the recovery programme in the Sassi district.
This operation, both cultural and political, provided for a breath of life into the Sassi district of Matera in the 60’s and 70’s was based on the rich amalgam of ideas and suggestions which, in a more on-going European context, tended to bring city centres to the fore.
UNESCO INSCRIPTION
il Castello Tramontano
The Sassi of Matera
Inscription N° 670 1993 C(iii)(iv)(v)
Criterion (iii): bears unique (or at least extraordinary) testimony to a cultural tradition or civilisation, either currently existing or from the past.
Criterion (iv): is an extraordinary example of a type of building or architectural, technological, or landscaping ensemble which bears witness to important stages in the history of mankind.
Criterion (v): is an extraordinary example of traditional human settlement or occupation of land representing a culture (or several cultures), especially when placed in jeopardy by irreversible changes.
