Carlo Levi was right - Christ certainly stopped at Eboli!

The Basilicata Region forms the instep of the Italian boot (see map below). It has long been Italy’s poorest region, now Basilicata is joining the modern world – it has wonderful Greek and Roman ruins; fine beaches; new hotels; wonderful food; decent wine; sublime scenery, Monte Pollino National Park; and Matera and its caves!

The town of Matera sits on a ridge, with deep canyons to either side. The sides of the canyons contain exposed layers of softer, sandier rock. Thousands of years ago, humans settled in the caves in the canyon walls, extending them until thousands of grottoes honeycombed the town. The caves make up Italy’s oldest continually inhabited dwellings that UNESCO called “the most outstanding example of a troglodyte settlement in the Mediterranean”.

Matera on the edge of the ravine

Even as recently as the 1930s, 20,000 landless peasants were crammed into the Barisano and Caveoso sassi i.e the town’s two main stone cave districts. In­side the cave dwellings, large families lived alongside their live­stock, without electricity or running water. Children appeared stark naked or in rags. In such filthy conditions, disease (especially cholera) and malnutrition were rife; illiteracy was very high. New born babies often died. Even by the standards of Italy’s impoverished south, the sassi were a national shame.

It took a book to bring this tragedy to wider attention. Christ Stopped at Eboli was written by Carlo Levi (1902–1975), a Jewish writer-artist-political activist exiled from Turin by the Fascists to Basilicata in 1935. Published in 1945, the title sugg­ested that Bas­il­icata was beyond the hand of God, a place where pagan magic survived. Reacting to outrage from the general public over Levi’s descriptions, the government finally relocated and rehoused the 20,000 residents of the caves into modern housing in the New Town, on top of the cliff – in 1952! No rush, Italian government!!

A rock church in Matera

The state owned the caves but the state had no interest in spending money on any improvements. Eventually the local council transformed the squatters into legal residents and connected them to the town’s utilities. A few business followed, along with the artists and writers who always seem to be the foundation of modernity.

The arrival of smart hotels started with Le Grotte della Civita. Grotte is a warm, comfortable hotel but the floors are uneven, the rock walls unad­orned, there is no restaurant and not many windows. This is the luxury only in the sense of a unique experience, a setting and history with which no other hotel can compare. Even the hotel's fittings and furniture are relics from decades gone by.

 Sasso Barisano

The best way to really feel Matera is to wander in the labyrinthine alleys and streets of the two sassi districts, Sasso Barisano and Sasso Caveoso. Their history is etched in the cave dwellings and their traditional house facades, in the pale stones underfoot and the enormous water cisterns below, and in the many rock churches cut into the yawning ravine (200 ms deep). The sassi are filled with silence, shadows, loneliness, mould and dead ends. The dark façades and the black entrances of still-abandoned caves exist even today. Some of Matera’s past is not so distant after all.

There are 155 frescoed cave churches, many of them only recently redis­cov­er­ed, in Matera. Cave churches were apparently excavated by Basilian monks fleeing persecution during the Byzantine Empire, and the faded frescoes were painted between the C8th and C13th. See Santa Lucia alle Malve, Chiesa Madonna delle Virtu and San Nicola dei Greci in Sasso Barisano and Chiesa di Santa Maria d’Idris. Cripta del Peccato Originale (the Crypt of Original Sin) is known as the Sistine Chapel of the cave churches... for its C8th frescoes representing theatrical scenes from the Bible.

Basilicata, Southern Italy

press to find Matera (in red)

The town's main historical museum, the Museo Nazionale Ridola, contains exhibits from Basilicata's distant past, until the Roman age. Palazzo Lanfranchi houses the Museo Nazionale d'Arte Medievale e Moderna della Regione Basilicata - an art museum of the medieval and the modern, focusing on southern artists. Centro Carlo Levi, which contains a range of paintings by the special artist and writer who became part of this region's modern history.

How things change. Until the 1950s, we know that many families were still living crowded into cave-houses here. But by the 1980s, the Scan­dalous Abandoned Caves of Matera had been changed into Fascinating Reminders of the Past. Matera is indeed fascinating these days, but its present fascination is drawn from pain felt very recently.

In the Long View of history, how strange that what was once an old network of subterranean slums in Matera has been transf­orm­ed into a luxury tourist destination. And how amazing that the area was declared a Unesco World Heritage Site in 1993. Even more amazing, Matera will be a European City of Culture in 2019. The population is only 60,000.

A hotel room in Sasso Caveoso 
Matera