Uncover Italy’s ‘caves of wonder’

It feels like we are giants on the edge of an ant city, peering down into the slow-paced daily life of its inhabitants and visitors.

Nothing to this point has hinted at the surreal panorama that unfolds before us.

We have arrived in Matera on the right bank of the Gravina River in this southern Italian region of Basilicata as part of a TripADeal package holiday touring Puglia, Amalfi and the Med.

We have walked down the bustling paved streets of the ‘new’ historic city and sought out the famed bread and focaccia made from local durum wheat, plus cured meats such as salami, mortadella and prosciutto in local shops.

We have sampled olives and the handmade, ring-shaped cracker called taralli from a legendary gentleman’s stall in the middle of town.

We have sipped an espresso and  had lunchtime aperitivos in the  Piazza Del Sedile “the living room of Matera”, listening to string rehearsals emanating from the nearby conservatorium classrooms.

And we have marvelled at the town clock atop the grand yellow sandstone building in Piazza Vittorio Veneto, the main square in the Piano open plain area.

But then our group is ushered on to a nearby terrace for the start of the main event: medieval Matera, for the most complete view of one of the twin cliffside neighbourhoods known as the Sassi.

While it was once “the shame of Italy”, the unique UNESCO Heritage-Listed landscape that makes up the Sassi (or ‘Stones’) of Matera is much more polished these days, welcoming an estimated three million visitors in 2024.

At the very top is the Civita old city, comprising the impressive Matera Cathedral (Romanesque style, circa early 1200s) with its Piazza Duomo square in front, and fortifications. It peels away to Sasso Barisano, with a labyrinth of paths, stairways, courtyards and dwellings atop other dwellings.

The buildings and associated man-made caves burrow into the sheer rock faces clinging to the edge of the 20km canyon that forms a geological boundary between the hill country of Basilicata to the southwest and  the Murgia plateau of Puglia to the northeast.

In a second nearby valley, out of view and completely separated from this neighbourhood, is Sasso Caveoso, with even more man-made caves and a similar maze of structures.

Matera is believed to be one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, dating back to the early Neolithic period, about 8000 BC.

At that time, nomads, gatherers and hunters stayed in the natural caves made of orange/pink hard, calcareous rock.

Our local guide, Cosimo Rondinone, tells us that it was only in the Bronze Age (3300-1200 BC) that shepherds and farmers began the excavation of caves in the soft sandstone to house animals, store food and protect themselves from the rain and wind, and taking advantage of two streams which flow into the canyon.

The ancient city grew from more permanent cave settlements on the right bank around 3000 years ago.

Today’s man-made caves – some up  to 65-70m deep – are disguised, however, by gardens and courtyards. It is only when visitors are up close with the residences, hotels, restaurants and tourist businesses that the sheer cave sizes become apparent.

“Much better than to say ‘an underground city’, the Sassi are like a beehive city or like Swiss cheese. Only when you go in do you realise there is another world: the caves,” Cosimo says.

“This name Sassi (Stones) was given  in the Middle Ages – the 1200s, in a  time here where there weren’t all  these houses.

“There were around us only caves. You could see the rock everywhere and there were stones that gave the name to the Sassi.

“The majority of these houses are from the 1600-1700s. Up to five centuries ago in the Sassi, there were only caves.”

A class shift occurred in the 16th and 17th centuries, when the centre of public life moved outside the fortified walls to the Piazza Sedile in the Piano to the west. By the end of the 18th century, the Sassi’s peasants had little interaction with the ‘elevated’ elite.

At the start of the 20th century, poverty and overcrowding forced even more farmers, shepherds and workers back to the caves where they shared daily life with the farm and work animals.

With no sanitation facilities, little light, dampness, smoke and poor ventilation, infection and disease spread quickly in the Sassi.

“In 1938, 50 per cent of our babies died in the caves before they were aged one,” Cosimo tells us.

“We suffered from cholera, tuberculosis, typhus and malaria in the marshy fields. Nobody knew what happened in the Sassi, and then there was a war that worsened it.

“Only in 1945 – and thanks to the publication of a novel, Christ Stopped at Eboli by Carlo Levi which is really one  of the most popular books ever published in Italy – was it reported the sad life in the Sassi.

“So, the politicians wanted to see  and they came down and called Matera the ‘shame of Italy’ –1948. A national disgrace – 1950.

“This beautiful jewel was, in the ‘50s, a ghetto, and one of the worst places in Italy to live.

“More than 20,000 people overpopulated the Sassi.”

In 1952, the Sassi were declared unsanitary and uninhabitable. All the peasants living in the caves were relocated into new public housing neighbourhoods outside the plain (once the outskirts but now very close to the main city) in the 1950-60s.

“The Sassi between the ’70s and early ’90s were abandoned and so began the deterioration,” Cosimo says.

“If you came to Matera more than 30 years ago, the Sassi were like a ghost town. Abandoned. A city under degradation collapses, squatters, local mafia. A dangerous place.”

Not everyone left. Cosimo’s grandfather lived in a more habitable home in the Sassi and was allowed to stay.

Cosimo has fond memories of the abandoned Sassi as his own private playground – even hiring himself out  as a ‘boy tourist guide’ for the first  curious visitors.

From the early 1990s, the government began granting long-term leases, negotiating renovations to be carried out by residents in lieu of rent.

Cosimo describes Matera today as a “work in progress”. The Sassi have caught up with modern life, boasting creature comforts found elsewhere in Italy.

About 1500 people now live there, out of the 60,000 in Matera City.

Washing hangs from clotheslines and curtains line the windows of the occupied homes. The well-heeled dine in restaurants including a cave that was once used to store wine barrels, or stay in the presidential suite of a hotel where 007 James Bond (aka Daniel Craig) lived while filming No Time To Die.

Cosimo acknowledges that much is changing. ‘Favourite son’ Pasquale Natuzzi may have put Matera on the world map for his 1959 factory that took Italian furniture to the world, but tourism is fast becoming the city’s lifeblood.

“Once it was the worst place in Italy to live. Now the Sassi, for the UNESCO, is one of the best examples all over the world that can tell you how people have lived in the same place for so long a time,” Cosimo says.

“Matera is the only city with 3500 caves, not 20 or 30 caves. We are not the only one with the caves but the caves we have are in a city, not scattered in a large, vast territory.

“The Sassi are no longer the city of the poorest people.

“We have new families and tourism – hotels, Airbnbs, accommodations, restaurants. In some way, we totally changed the idea of the Sassi.”

HOW TO GET THERE – Matera is about an hour by car from Bari in Southern Italy. Bari also has the closest airport and can be reached by train or bus from major tourist centres including Rome and Naples.

 If you are not visiting the area as  part of a tour group, go to guidematera.com/en/index.html for Matera Official Tour Guides.