By Milica Ostojic

MATERA, Italy — The city of Matera (approximately 60km from Bari) has been around for a very long time — continuously inhabited since the Palaeolithic era,  Matera’s claim to antiquity has been well established. In the middle of the historical part of the city lie the tourist-famed Sassi or caves, but it was only in 1948 that debate over the Sassi di Matera was raised: first by the Communist leader Palmiro Togliatti and then by Christian Democrat statesman Alcide De Gasperi, who called the 15,000 inhabitants living side by side with their animals among the rocky terrain a ‘’national disgrace’’.

The city of stone has actually been inhabited at least since the Neolithic Age — some of the archaeological finds date back to 10,000 years ago, and many of the houses cut deep into the limestone have been lived in uninterruptedly since the Bronze Age. The first documented source records Sasso as an inhabited stone district in 1204. The city is likely of Greek origin, as Francesco Paolo Volpe claims in his ’Memorie Storiche Profane e Religiose’ on the city of Matera, though a variety of hypotheses have been put forward on how exactly the city came into being.

 One of the theories on its name is that it derives from the root ‘Mata’, meaning pile or heap of rocks, or from the Greek ‘Metèoron’, a star-filled sky. In ancient times, both in the Greek and then in the Roman eras, Matera felt the effects of migrations and invasions from the north and from the coast.

 In the Middle Ages the Lombards came (c. VI century A.D), to be followed by the Saracens and then the Normans, with  anchorite monks and monastic communities from the East settling in the Gravina grottoes from the VIIIth century, turning them into rupestrian churches (of which there are about 150), decorated with Byzantine-style frescoes. Matera was therefore transformed into a sort of bridge between Eastern and Western ‘’rupestrian civilizations’. In the XIIIth century, the cathedral was built as a symbol of the power of the Western Church.
The Sassi, which until the end of the eighteenth century had served as a model of integration between man and his natural environment, suffered considerable decline over the following two centuries, leading to their being labelled a ‘’national disgrace.’’ They became a sort of countryside ghetto with ever-worsening social conditions, as well as the national symbol for the backwardness and underdevelopment of southern Italy. In 1952, state funds were allocated to build new residential quarters for the 15,000 people living in the grotto-homes and the government ordered their relocation for hygienic-sanitary reasons, while in 1986 another national law financed the restoration of the ancient districts of Matera.

Finally, in 1993, the Sassi di Matera were declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site - the first ever in southern Italy – and was listed among the 395 Wonders of the World, as well as the first site to be protected as for its value as ‘’Cultural Landscape’’. The honour was due to their representing an extraordinary urban ecosystem, able to perpetuate living in caves from the farthest reaches of the prehistoric past down to the modern day.
It is a city geologically very similar to ancient Jerusalem and Cappadocia, the destination of so many different peoples and their masterpieces, and has been found to be of priceless poetic and inspirational value by such writers and film directors as Carlo Levi, Pier Paolo Pasolini and Mel Gibson. The latter chose it as a film set for his ‘’Passion of Christ’’, remarking at one point that he had fallen in love with it on first sight, since ‘’it was simply perfect’’. The Sassi were also used as the backdrop for a number of scenes in the films of the Roaring Sixties, as well as various others since.

The Sassi di Matera and the urban structure of the districts are undeniably one of a kind. Dug into the tufa of the Gravina of Matera, they are made up of an intricate web of alleyways and steps, grottoes and stately buildings, arches and balconies, gardens and vast terraces where plumbing and wells have been cut into the depths of the terrain and are able to keep water cool and drinkable even in the hottest of summer days — ample reason for a recovery, as now borne witness to by the hotels, restaurants and shops springing up. Moreover, all the works were carried out using local materials and building techniques to preserve the building heritage as well as the historical and anthropological value of the places.

The latest wonder (which opened its doors to guests nine months ago) can be found in 18 grottoes, over a surface area of 100 square metres and with a shared space within an ancient rock church, called “Le Grotte della Civita”: not lending itself to a classification in terms of ‘’stars’’ and far from any concept of luxury, it can hold a total of 40 guests. The unique hotel project was the carried out by the Polish-German entrepreneur Margaret Berg and Daniel Kihlgren (who had previously restored a number of historical areas as ‘’lesser-known historical heritage’’, such as Santo Stefano di Sessanio in Abruzzo, for which he was widely praised by the international press), the Italian-Swedish entrepreneur whose brainchild the project was.