Matera

Matera stands on the right bank of the Gravina, whose canyon divides the hill country of Basilicata from the Murgia plateau of Puglia, and the area is thought to have been settled since the Palaeolithic, making it potentially one of the oldest continuously inhabited places in the world. The town began as caves dug into the soft limestone of the ravine wall; the high ground between two streams became the Civita, and the districts burrowing down the cliffs became the Sassi. The Roman Lucius Caecilius Metellus is said to have founded Matheola in 251 BC.

Lombards took it in 664, and Benedictine and Basilian monks settled the caves in the 7th and 8th centuries, leaving the rock churches. It came under the Emirate of Bari, was burnt by Louis II's troops in 867, and passed between Byzantines, Arabs and Normans; a new cathedral was consecrated in 1082. Sold to Count Giancarlo Tramontano in 1497, the townspeople killed him in 1514, leaving his castle unfinished. From the 16th century public life moved up to the Piano, and by the 18th century the overcrowded Sassi of the peasants lay physically below the homes of their landlords.

Matera was capital of Basilicata until 1806 and of a new province from 1927. In the 20th century the Sassi were declared unfit to live in, and under a national law of 1952 the state moved their roughly 15,000 inhabitants, often by force, to new districts between 1952 and the 1970s. A law of 1986 opened the way to restoration, UNESCO listed the Sassi in 1993, and in 2019 Matera was a European Capital of Culture with Plovdiv.

The Festa della Madonna della Bruna on 2 July is the city's great day. A religious procession carries the Madonna, and an ornamented cart is pulled apart by the crowd; legends explain it as the cart that brought her statue into town, or one destroyed to keep a painting of her from the Saracens. An Italo-Byzantine fresco of the Madonna, dated to 1270, is in the cathedral, which has been dedicated to her since 1389.

Matera's landscape has made it a favourite of film-makers, who call it "Little Jerusalem". Pasolini's The Gospel According to St. Matthew (1964), The Passion of the Christ (2004) and The Nativity Story (2006) were shot here, as were Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979), Wonder Woman (2017) and No Time to Die (2021), and Bollywood productions have followed. Italian television series such as Imma Tataranni are set in the city.

The arts have grown with the revival. Palazzo Lanfranchi shows sacred art and paintings by Carlo Levi, MUSMA displays modern sculpture inside the Sassi, and the Museo Ridola beside the church of Santa Chiara tells the story of the prehistoric and Lucanian peoples of the area.

About 59,000 people live in Matera, the capital of its province and, with Potenza, one of the two main towns of Basilicata. Since 1952 the city has spread into new districts built for the families moved out of the Sassi; the Sassi themselves have been partly reoccupied since the 1986 law, often by better-off residents, and filled with businesses, pubs and places to stay.

The city is among the fastest-growing in southern Italy, and tourism, helped by the UNESCO listing, has become central to its economy. Farming on the surrounding plateau, the San Giuliano reservoir and the Bradano valley shape the countryside, and the Murgia Materana park, a regional park since 1990, covers the far side of the ravine.

The day turns on the upper town: the station, the shops, the provincial library in the Palazzo dell'Annunziata on Piazza Vittorio Veneto, and the evening passeggiata through the squares. Below, the Sassi are busy with visitors by day and quieter at night.

Matera's cooking is cucina povera, the food of the poor, typical of southern Italy. Its emblem is the pane di Matera, a conical durum-wheat loaf with an intense flavour that holds protected geographical status, and the city gives its name to a DOC wine. Peperoni cruschi, sweet dried peppers popular across Basilicata, are tossed with pasta and fried breadcrumbs in pasta con i peperoni cruschi.

Crapiata is a peasant soup of chickpeas, beans, broad beans, wheat, lentils and cicerchie, later enriched with potatoes; its recipe is said to date from Roman times, and it is cooked in the Sassi on 1 August. Orecchiette alla materana are baked with tomatoes, lamb, mozzarella and pecorino. Pignata is mutton cooked with potatoes, onion, tomatoes and celery in a terracotta pot shaped like an amphora, from which the dish takes its name.

Stale bread is never wasted: cialedda, widespread around Matera, is a frugal dish built on it. Strazzate are crumbly biscuits made with egg, almonds and coffee. Pubs and restaurants in the restored caves of the Sassi and the trattorias of the upper town serve these dishes alongside wines of the region.