Sunday 23 June

Back on the road at 0930 and we were in Matera before midday.   Our small bus dropped us near the town square and we left our bags for the hotel to pick up, then headed down the steps to out ‘Hotel Sassi’ (sassi is the name for the caves and the two hillsides) and our rooms, all of which were in real caves scattered around the hillside.  I asked the receptionist about the date stone above the glass door leading out to a small balcony (fantastic view from that office for sure), the stone said 1708 and she said it was discovered by workmen when the hotel was being created, its exactly where it was found.  So that was food for thought, to think where we were had been used for various purposes for three hundred years.

Our cave was L-shaped and quite big, a family room with a bed-settee in the foot of the L.   Unfortunately it wasn’t the best experience, we both felt it was damp and our bed sheets were definitely clammy that night, in fact in the end I put a bath towel on the bed and slept better on that.   It was very musty-smelling too with just the door as an opening to outside.   However, we’ve been there and done that and wouldn’t say ‘don’t do it’ as it’s an experience if nothing else.

Our rooms weren’t ready so we all went back up to the square and split up to have a look around, some went to the Salvador Dali exhibition but I made do with his big elephant statue in the middle of town.   The squares and some of the streets were filled with scaffolding and people putting up huge white decorations covered with lights, getting ready for the feast of (I think) the Madonna with the Dark Hair, or something like that, but they wouldn’t be lit up until the actual day a week or so away.  We saw a great church decoration of a little man holding up the rose window, dated 1661.  

I was too hot to go far so Pete went off on an explore and I had a little wander round, took some photos, listened to a very talented boy, maybe about 10, playing the piano accordion like a professional.     I went down the steps to the Palombaro Lungo cistern but couldn’t go in, instead went through the remains of an old church to look over the now-familiar Matera houses.    It was quite a surprise to see the remains of frescoes on the walls and we were told later that the bell tower at road level was actually the bell tower for this little church.

We all met up again after 2pm, settled in and then at 4.30 met our guide Francesco at a water fountain near our hotel and the fact-finding began, starting with the fact that there are about 3000 caves and none of them were built as houses, they were all hollowed out to use for storage.   This area was rich in farmland and good for wheat, olives, beans etc for over 500 years, and they needed somewhere to store their produce so these man-made caves were the answer.   The blocks of stone removed were used for building elsewhere.   The Catholic church owned most of the land and got rent (and richer) and other landowners were wealthy.  Then in the 1800’s things dropped off, farmers left their land and with no homes they started moving into the caves and building up at the entrances.   Francesco emphasised that pretty much everywhere you walked on the paths there would be a cave under it, and pointed out a large chimney right beside us ‘you’re standing on a roof right now and that’s their chimney’.   

We went into a nearby church, unusual in that what we thought was the main door was actually the side wall, built by the Franciscans in 1200.   There was a hospital next door and the monks used to charge people to go through and eventually I think people wouldn’t pay so the door was bricked up and the new side entrance created.    It had a beautiful painted ceiling which looked like it was vaulted, but was actually flat and it was trompe l’oeuil – tricky!    

Next stop was at the cisterns and this time inside which was interesting because we’d been to the cisterns in Istanbul which were all man-made with dozens of columns, but this was totally different.   It was actually six deep caves joined together, the sides were coated with a special waterproof substance, and they held up to 5 million litres of water which mainly came from springs where the water forced up through the earth where rock met clay soil – which happens to be pretty much in the middle of Matera town and there are several fountains around.   He pointed out the trapdoor in the roof, and the hollowed out area underneath that which made it easier to fill a bucket if the water level was low in summer.  An aqueduct was built 100 years or more ago and the cisterns closed down and almost forgotten, but re-opened a few years ago, filled with water, and they sent scuba divers down to explore.   And since then it has become a real tourist attraction and still has water in it (a couple of feet deep today), and they pump it out regularly to keep the level even.   You never know what you’ll find around the next corner. 

We didn’t have much climbing on the tour except right at the end, simplistically the first ‘canyon’, or housing area, ends at the cathedral; you then carry on the path which leads you to the second canyon with typical cave housing on one side and on the opposite side we saw several actual caves which had been used since about 5000 years ago.   We did go into the cathedral which was built around 1200 and ‘blinged-up’ by rich people wanting to buy their way to heaven in the 1700s, so there was lots of gold.    

Once ‘over the top’ and down the other side Francesco told us what happened to the town.   The area had got very poor and people were living in the caves, and in the 1950s a book about the poverty of the area seemed to embarrass the government and they resettled pretty much all of the population and the caves became derelict.    If you wanted to see them just a few years ago you had to jump a fence and virtually become a trespasser.    Then I think the UN may have become involved because Matera is now a UN world heritage site, but also the government is supporting the regeneration and has a deal where anyone from anywhere in the world can have a cave and renovate it, but it must be done within three years.    There are rules of course such as the façade must be in keeping, shutters must be green or a couple of other colours, but everywhere you look there is work going on, paths and safety walls are repaired.  Some have been turned into hotels, others are obviously family homes, and around 2000 people live here now.  

We just wandered and heard about the history, got some good photos.  I’ve seen a photo of Matera in winter, it looks stunning with snow all around but in the 30+ temperature even in the evening it was hard to imagine it getting cold.    Jacob took us to a good restaurant down the hill from our hotel, and afterwards some of us went into the square for gelato; that’s become something of a tradition now. 

And then it was home to bed in our cave, opinion given above, but despite it all the bed was comfortable and we slept well enough.

Monday 24 June

Breakfast at 8.30 and we had an actual pot of tea, the best we’ve had in all the hotels so far which have ranged from a ceramic jug with boiling water in it, to an electric jug on the table (if they remember to turn it on), to lukewarm water in a pump pot.   A surprise was a little side niche beside the tables to what turned out to be some sort of silo with a wooden roof and dipped floor, similar to the cisterns we saw yesterday.  I wonder if it was for water or grain.

The sun was already hot at 8.30 but I spent some time leaning over the wall just looking around at daily life starting up with washing hanging over terrace rails, a crane moving big pieces of something onto a building site, and workmen whistling in a cave just two doors along from hours – a reno going on accompanied by Ed Sheeran at full blast.       After breakfast our bags were picked up at 9.45, at 10.15 we walked for about 25 minutes to meet the van driver and were on the train at 11am heading for Bari.