Day 21 of 23 on our journey down Italy’s Adriatic Coast, and it all culminated in this highly anticipated climax at one of the world’s most ancient cities.
It is a commune of prehistoric cave dwellings continuously inhabited for tens of thousands of years, desolate and forbidding to outsiders only a generation ago, now slowly rediscovered by independent travelers as one of Southern Italy’s many hidden gems.
The very last of 12 UNESCO World Heritage Sites on our 1000 km journey, mysterious Matera made a fitting finale as we traveled from the Austrian border to the heel of Italy. Despite lacking the international prominence of glorious Venice, one could argue that it is equally inimitable in its own down-to-earth way.
From the surface -- and I mean in a literal sense, arriving at the beautifully crumbling town situated above the caves -- Matera seemed prototypical of this traditionally impoverished region of Southeastern Italy, dotted with dilapidated church facades and the occasional broken and bolted window of vacant homes.
A few steps towards the cliff and it revealed easily the most primitive city we had ever witnessed, a claustrophobic cluster of caverns burrowed into calcareous rocks along the edge of a steep ravine, partially disguised as something less prehistoric by concealing the caves with square entrances.
For years various filmmakers have casted this stunningly archaic townscape as exotic locales from 1st Century Jerusalem to King Arthur’s Camelot, which speaks to Matera’s uniqueness as possibly the most convincingly ancient city, at least in the Western world.
As spectacular as Matera would appear to any first time visitor, attracting the average foreign tourist remains challenging for this distant region of Basilicata, situated roughly at the ankle of the Italian boot, far away from the convenience of the Milan-Rome-Naples corridor of highways and high speed rail lines.
As of 2016 Matera remains cut off from the national rail network, turning away most would-be visitors who perhaps don’t realize the convenience of a narrow guage private rail which connects the town to the regional transportation hub of Bari.
Coming from our previous stop of Ostuni we took the national rail to Bari Centrale, then transferred to a surprisingly brand new, state-of-the-art commuter train on the privately operated Ferrovie Appulo Lucane and arrived at Matera’s underground train station in the early afternoon.
For independent travelers like us, Matera’s geographical isolation could just be its greatest asset in restricting the number of day-tripping tourists. While we did encounter the occasional multinational tour group upon our afternoon arrival, the first evening stroll was an absolutely magical experience of time traveling back 2000 years.
And that’s exactly why we rented a cave house at the heart of the Sassi, two neighborhoods carved out of stones in local terms, to fully immerse into this hauntingly ancient town and enjoy those early morning and evening walks with barely anyone else sharing those millennium-old cobblestone paths.
With dozens of old grottos now converted into anything from private rooms to extravagant designer hotels, booking a well-equipped cave house in Matera turned out relatively easy and cheap enough even for our modest accommodation budget.
Our main problem was in locating our apartment amongst the labyrinth of alleyways zigzagging down the steep terrain, all without calling the landlord (our Tre Italia SIM Card was data only)! After passing by our eventual apartment several times without finding the address, we finally resorted to an antiquated payphone.
Within 10 minutes our friendly landlord arrived, two umbrellas in hand to save us from the drizzly weather, and guided us through the bewildering maze to what would turn out to be the most spacious apartment of our 23-day trip.
Our grotto was actually the bottom level of a multi-storey cavern, a prehistoric palazzo so to speak, with the upper level occupied by the landlord. Just this level alone featured a ginormous 100 square meters of indoor living space, not to mention a crude outdoor patio.
Burrowed at an angle at the far end of the cave was essentially a master bedroom, though with no walls to separate itself from the rest of the house. The only two doors in the entire apartment belonged to the front entrance and the bathroom.
On the west side the cavern opens up into a split level design, with the bottom level serving as a small single room and the top level featuring a large walk-in closet.
Most essential during our stay was this functional kitchen equipped with a new induction stovetop and oven, a refrigerator and all the necessary pots and utensils. To our surprise there was even a small washing machine which we never tried out.
These were two very memorable nights in one of the most unique -- and quite possibly the oldest -- houses we’ve ever rented. And the lack of a TV (apparently the signal reception was very poor at the bottom of the Sassi) obliged us to immerse into this extraordinary hole-in-the-wall and enjoy our stint as modern troglodytes.
While our cave house was located near the bottom of Sasso Barisano, it was only a 3 minute hike up to Piazza del Sedile for groceries and possibly restaurants that we would have loved to try if we didn’t come down with stomach pains and slight fevers during our stay.
Perhaps it was too much pomodorini for breakfast or maybe the large amount of Fico d’India seeds that we ingested the night before, but our stomachs restricted us to only the lightest meals until our final lunch in town. That said, we did manage to get a taste of the two main local specialties:
Orecchiette con Cime di Rapa was one of my favorite memories of the Italian South, so much so that I’ve since learned the recipe from an Italian co-worker, who in turned inherited the recipe from his mother. There’s no magic to it -- just the perfect balance of slight bitterness from the Cime di Rapa, the savory essence of anchovies and most important of all, heaps and heaps of fresh garlic. This dish was an eye-opening experience that would likely serve me well for the rest of my life.
What sustained us during our two days of sickness was arguably Matera’s greatest contribution to the Italian food scene -- the famous Pane di Matera with its signature crunchy crust, pillowy soft interior and intense aroma of durum wheat. Needless to say it was among the best bread I’ve ever tasted, even with my reduced appetite and numbed tastebuds.
We bought our bread from the busiest Panificio I encountered anywhere in Italy -- by 08:30 I was already fighting with 20 or so housewives and grannies inside the tiny shop for a fresh loaf! For any reader planning on visiting Matera, definitely drop by Martino Casa di Pane (on the south side of Piazza Vittorio Veneto) and give your tastebuds a treat, as early in the morning as possible before the best selection is gone.
Despite our sickness we did manage some easy sightseeing inside this fascinating UNESCO World Heritage Site, starting off with the neighborhood of Sasso Barisano where we stayed.
The star attraction of the Sassi was its amazing collection of medieval rock hewn churches such as the 12th Century San Pietro Barisano, a massive subterranean hall that served as the heart and soul of the neighborhood until the 1950s.
Most of the churches originated from natural caves inhabited since stone age, expanded through centuries of digging into the soft rocks and some even became cavernous enough to feature multi-level catacombs that doubled as the town’s cemetery.
On the opposite side of Piazza del Sedile, narrow steps passed below the medieval arches to the other Sasso district known as Caveoso, an even more primitive-looking neighborhood of dense cave dwellings and rupestrian churches.
Across the ravine from Sasso Caveoso was a series of prehistoric caves once occupied by the first humans who settled in the area, some 9,000 years ago when Sassi Barisano and Caveoso were founded in the same way, before millennia of continuous inhabitation and adaptation developed them into this unmistakeably ancient and yet contemporary city.
This could just be Southern Italy’s greatest comeback story, transforming some of country’s poorest slums into a fashionable, internationally facing city of boutique cave hotels and restaurants. As the city readies itself to become the 2019 European Capital of Culture, one has to believe that the best is yet to come.
In the meantime, independent travelers like ourselves will keep enjoying Matera’s relatively anonymity for now while it flies under the radar from most organized tours. The only queues I ever encountered over three days were at the panificio and the supermercato, waiting behind the local housewives.
On our last day our landlord drove us to the train station in his little old Fiat, after which our flight out of the BRI airport was a mere 2 hours away by train. Access to this world class scenery wasn’t as inconvenient and time-consuming as most people think.
On our flight home I browsed through these photos and considered how Matera would rank among all the destinations we visited over 23 days. It’s certainly among my favorites along with beautiful Lecce, which tells you how much I loved this final week in Southern Italy. Our stomach pains did cease prior to arriving home, leaving us no excuse from settling into our 9-to-5 routine again, for another year before our next overseas trip.
