The Sassi of Matera

Sassi di Matera | Historical chronology

Neolithic Era

The earliest evidence of life in Matera, as in the rest of the region, dates back to the Lower Palaeolithic, more precisely to around 400,000 years ago. About 4 km from the town, the Grotta dei Pipistrelli (Bats’ Cave) gives us traces of human habitation through the numerous and various finds dating back to the Upper Palaeolithic, discovered in what is the largest of all the karstic cavities along the Gravina.

It is only in the Neolithic period (whose most accomplished expression in the territory of Matera is attested from the fifth millennium) that human settlements in the territory of Matera begin to occupy a rather extensive area and bear witness to a more complex form of life: the 13 entrenched villages (Serra d’Alto 1-2-3, Murgecchia, Murgia Timone, Trasano, Trasano Masseria, Trasanello cement factory, Trasanello Incompleto, Verdesca, Tirlecchia 1-2-3) discovered during research carried out in the late 19th – early 20th century by Domenico Ridola date back to this period, a doctor from Matera with a strong passion for archaeology, who first understood the function of the excavations surrounding the villages, which were real defence works and not, as many believed, drainage ditches or even ancient communication routes.

First demographic increase

This concentration of villages testifies to a strong demographic increase with the transition from a nomadic life, linked to hunting and the gathering of wild fruits, to a production economy based on animal husbandry and agriculture, which complemented, if not replaced, the previous subsistence economy.

Perhaps as early as the Neolithic period, certainly during the Iron Age, the frequentation of the high ground sites on that side of the Gravina on which the historic town would rise, and in particular on the Civita, began. The available data, essentially linked to the scarce though significant archaeological finds, do however allow us to assume that, at least in an initial phase, it was simply the presence of groups of individuals from the agricultural villages widespread on the Murgie plateau. Only later would the Civita, with its privileged position as an isolated highland site capable of guaranteeing control over the entire surrounding territory, experience an increasingly large population until it became the nucleus around which the Sassi of Matera were to be built.

Medieval Era

For the Greek and Roman epochs, the documentation in our possession is rather scarce; Matera does not seem to have been of great importance within the region, but neither is it to be considered a ‘peripheral place’, even with respect to the main communication routes in the area.

Much more conspicuous are the documents concerning the medieval period. It is from the 9th century onwards that the town takes on a better defined form; the largest part of the built-up area develops on the Civita, while in the two small valleys rising at its foot there are inhabited nuclei, country hamlets that, with the passing of the centuries and due to the tendency of the inhabitants to move closer to the town for safety reasons, would become true districts: the Sassi di Matera.

Matera shares a tendency that is typical of most of the inhabited centres of the time, which were built on high ground for safety reasons. Basilicata, like the rest of the south, after the collapse of the Roman Empire became the scene of battles between peoples fighting for domination of these territories: Goths and Byzantines, and then Lombards and Saracens. It was only with the rise of the Normans in the south that Matera experienced a moment of relative political stability; but the Norman era is also the one in which feudalism entered the region and continued to spread during the Swabian period.

Early redevelopment and urban expansion

In terms of urban planning, already in the 12th century the two poles(Civita and Sassi) around which the city was built, showed the first signs of integration. With the 13th century, under Angevin rule, the Civita experienced a real urban redevelopment with the building of the Matera Cathedral (completed in 1270), the monastery of Sant’Eustachio and the Castrum (the latter was demolished during the 15th century to make way for the residences of the wealthiest aristocratic families; a memory of this remains in the name of the site, now called Castelvecchio).

During the same period, there was a certain demographic and, consequently, residential development in the Sassi; the economic and social value of the ‘caves’ grew and the plateaus on the edges of the Sassi were occupied. This development of the city in a larger area is the premise for the subsequent expansion of the city during the 14th and 15th centuries. From a political point of view, Matera, which at the beginning of the 14th century was part of the Principality of Taranto, during the 14th and 15th centuries saw its history marked by intermittent dependence on feudal government (numerous dynasties of lords alternated in the leadership of the city after the princes of Taranto, from Del Balzo to Sanseverino) and royal government.

It must be said that Matera, for a long time under the influence of the coastal towns of Apulia, has always oscillated between the prevailing agricultural-pastoral voc ation of Lucania and the mercantile vocation of the Apulian towns; however, after the transfer of the Royal Hearing Office of Basilicata to Matera in 1663 and the consequent move of the city to a new province, the flow of trade with Apulia diminished, with the consequent contraction of production and craft activities linked precisely to trade.

The Sassi of Matera from the 15th to the 18th century

In the Aragonese period (15th-16th centuries) the town was equipped with a larger defensive system, for fiscal reasons connected to the payment of duty; significant building expansion also began to take place on the Plain, where Piazza Maggiore (later called Piazza Sedile) took on considerable importance.

The Sassi districts now appear well-articulated internally, with the organisation into neighbourhoods, giving rise to a new district, the Casalnuovo, to accommodate first the Albanian refugees who arrived in the mid-15th century fleeing from Albania occupied by the Ottoman Turks, and then the Jews who arrived at the end of the century from Spain then ruled by Ferdinand the Catholic and Isabella of Castile. However, there was not yet the ‘density of habitation’ that they would experience in later centuries; this is clear from the fact that the number of caves far exceeded the number of palazziate houses (houses built on top of a cave nucleus and its extension in tuff ashlars, known as lamione).

In the following century, the importance of Piazza Maggiore grew: in the second half of the 16th century, the Palazzo del Sedile (the seat of the Town Hall), the Governor’s Palace and the Prisons were built there. Via dei Boccieri (today’s Via delle Beccherie) took on new importance, starting from Piazza Sedile and running along the plateau facing the Sasso Barisano. The residential presence in the Sassi grew and the road system of the two districts of the Sassi di Matera began to be defined.

The new social classes

During the 17th century, a rupture began to appear in the integrated relationship between the ‘upper part’ of the city and the Sassi. The Plan continued its expansion: with the construction of the seminary (this is Palazzo Lanfranchi completed, in its original layout, in 1672) a new artery was developed, connecting the Seminary to Piazza Sedile (this is today’s Via Ridola). In 1663, the Royal Audience of Basilicata, as mentioned earlier, was moved to Matera (with the consequent transfer of the city to Basilicata; Matera in fact, until this date, belonged to the Terra d’Otranto), together with the Court connected to it. The new class of civil servants present in the city identified the Plan as a suitable place to build their residences, characterising the area in a distinctly bourgeois sense.

The Sassi di Matera, although not totally unrelated to this process of growth and expansion (at the end of the 16th century, the monastery of Sant’Agostino was built near the access point to the Sasso Barisano), saw the beginning of a degenerative process, with respect to the quality of life, that would prove irreversible.

The rise of the Bourbons

The 18th century opened with a series of events that led to the end of Aragonese rule in southern Italy; the Austrians made their appearance on the peninsula in an attempt to establish their dominion there. After a series of clashes with mixed results, the Bourbons, a French royal house that had taken over the Spanish throne at the beginning of the 18th century, established themselves in the south. It seems that the people of Matera welcomed the new sovereign Charles of Bourbon on a visit to the city on 17 January 1735, so much so that, after his departure, the citizens erected an equestrian statue in his honour in Piazza Sedile (except that it was demolished in February 1799, driven by the enthusiasm generated by the proclamation of the Neapolitan Republic).

As far as Matera is concerned, during the 19th century the gap, if not the contrast, between the Sassi and the Piano became even more evident. The dwellings within the two districts multiplied; as a result, living conditions worsened considerably, giving ‘cave living’ a character of diversity, of otherness. This is the period in which many of the cave churches are deconsecrated and begin to be used as dwellings or storerooms. At the same time, the importance of the churches on the Plan grows, and their urban perimeter undergoes new changes. New dwellings rise, almost as if to conceal their view, on the upper edges of the Sassi, excluding them from participation in the life of the city. From this moment on, they exist as two separate cities.

Matera and the Sassi | from the 19th century to today

Matera, by now identified with the Plan and its offshoots, will experience ups and downs in historical and political terms, seeing its role and importance within the region considerably reduced.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Royal Audience of Basilicata was transferred to Potenza. A sort of punishment inflicted on the citizens for the loyalty shown to the Bourbon monarchy in the aftermath of the proclamation of the Neapolitan Republic in 1799. It was a hard blow for the city, which was suddenly deprived of its political and institutional functions. In the absence of a political referent, as often happened in history, the only reference for the population was the religious authority. In the general crisis situation, the only ones to see their power grow were the ecclesiastical authorities, the largest landowners of the time. Next to them were a small number of large landowners and medium-sized landowners, as well as a few labourers. All the others were peasants and labourers leading a life on the edge of survival, almost all living in the Rioni Sassi.

Beginning of Brigandage

It was in the course of the 19th century that living conditions in the Sassi quarters became dramatic, becoming, in all their clarity (lack of light, water and sewerage system), a problem difficult to solve. From a political-social point of view, the history of this century, up to the Unification of Italy, is marked by the social question, by the deep divide existing between the different social areas, the rich bourgeoisie, the landowners, the officials of the kingdom on one side and the peasantry on the other. The revolutionary uprisings of ’20-’21 and then of 1848, although led by predominantly bourgeois elements, saw the massive involvement of the people who, although alien to any conscious prospect of political and social renewal, believed that the upheaval of the economic situation would finally allow them to claim the land that would enable them to escape a life of hardship and misery.

Unfortunately, the revolutionary uprisings were unable to address the agrarian question or bring about significant social transformations. Thus, the day after its proclamation (on 17 March 1861), the newly born Kingdom of Italy found itself facing an increasingly complex ‘southern question‘, aggravated by the spread of banditry in the post-unification period. Born with a predominantly economic character, because it was aimed at obtaining the longed-for division of land, it ended up becoming a form of ‘common delinquency’: the Lucanian Giustino Fortunato defined it as

a spontaneous movement, historically renewing itself at every agitation, at every political change, because it was substantially of a primitive and savage nature, the result of the centuries-old brutalisation of poverty and ignorance of our rural plebs.

The so-called ‘rural plebs’ in Matera crowded the two stony districts, creating an ‘overcrowding’ that irreversibly compromised the already precarious living conditions. Already in the early 20th century, institutions expressed their interest in the Sassi issue. In 1902, the Honourable Zanardelli, then Prime Minister, visited the city, following a speech given in the Chamber of Deputies in June of the same year by Michele Torraca, a Lucanian MP, who had denounced the region’s plagues more generally, not least emigration, which he feared would reduce Basilicata to a wasteland. The result of President Zanardelli’s visit was Special Law No. 140 of 31 March 1904, which provided for redevelopment throughout the region. Unfortunately, in the twenty years envisaged for its implementation, the law came to nothing.

From national disgrace to world heritage site

In 1948, Palmiro Togliatti, leader of the Italian Communist Party, called the Sassi a ‘national disgrace’ during his visit to Matera. But it was not until the post-war period that the first concrete measures were taken. With the first special law (Law No. 619 of 17 May 1952) the displacement of the Sassi began. It would take other laws and more than twenty years to complete the ’emptying’ of the two ancient districts and to see a more organic attempt at redevelopment.

In 1993, the Sassi and the Historical and Natural Archaeological Park of the Rock Churches of Matera (established in 1990) became a World Heritage Site. After being defined as a ‘national disgrace’, the Sassi were recognised as a ‘cultural landscape’, a clear manifestation of man’s ability to adapt to the morphological characteristics of an apparently harsh territory poor in natural resources (in fact, it was necessary to conserve rainwater as a primary resource by inventing a water recovery system through communicating cisterns). Testimony of a disappeared civilisation, the rupestrian civilisation, and at the same time the only site in the world inhabited, without interruption, from the Palaeolithic to the present day. Herein lies the magic of this enchanted place.

The Toponym and its Origin

As often happens, the very name of the city, Matera, is linked to a variety of origins, whose hidden meanings conceal as many aspects of the history and nature of the site itself. Some believe that the name may derive from the fusion of the first syllables of Metapontum and Heraclea [MET + (H)ERA] for having welcomed refugees from the two colonies of Magna Graecia following their destruction.

Others believe that the oldest form of the name was Meteola, or because it was derived from the name of the Roman consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus who, after the social war of 90 BC, had the destroyed city rebuilt with walls and fortifications (one of the few still standing is the Torre Metellana, named after the Roman consul); or rather because of the clear assonance with the Greek μάταιος όλος (‘all empty’), with explicit reference to the very conformation of the site, rich in caves and hollows.

Another hypothesis is the one that traces the name back to the Latin materia,ae ( or materies,ei ) in the meaning of ‘wood’, due to the abundance of woods (one must bear in mind that at one time, the site on which the modern city stands looked very different; it was human activities, practised indiscriminately, that drastically reduced biodiversity, often irreversibly). Many other hypotheses have been put forward, but probably the most accredited is the one according to which the place name Matera can be traced back to the semantic root mata (or meta) meaning ‘cliff, high ground’; once again, the reference would be to the morphology of the site.

Curiosities about the Sassi of Matera

The word ‘Sasso‘ in the meaning of ‘stony district’ appears in an anonymous document from 1204. As for the distinction between the two districts in Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano there are several hypotheses.

Sasso Caveoso

The Sasso Caveoso would derive its name from the Latin ‘cavea’ meaning ‘cavity, cave’, because it is apparently more excavated than the Barisano, where the ‘built’ houses are much more numerous, concealing the caves below; or in the more specific meaning of ‘cavea’ for its particular conformation, like a Greek amphitheatre. Another hypothesis is that the name derives from the orientation of the district, facing south, in the direction of Montescaglioso (from the Latin Mons Caveosus).

Sasso Barisano

The name Sasso Barisano could in turn depend on the district’s orientation in a north-westerly direction, towards the city of Bari. Or it could be linked to the presence in Roman times of a hamlet inhabited by the noble family Varisisius, hence Varisianus and, later, Barisano (this was also the interpretation given by Raffaele Giura Longo in his Sassi e Secoli).

A clarification must be made on the rock material in which the caves are excavated and with which, later, dwellings were built. It is generally referred to as tuff. But tuff is a rock formation of volcanic origin, although this word is often referred to, in a more generic way, to different rocks that share a certain friability and ease of working, as in the case of the porous limestone of the Gravina di Matera (called Altamura limestone). It is therefore a sedimentary rock of marine origin (bear in mind that many living beings have a skeleton or a calcareous shell, so that after the death of such organisms, the mineralised residues are deposited on the bottom, forming sediments that, through a particular physical-chemical process called diagenesis, are transformed into coherent rocks). More precisely, the blocks of stone (the so-called tuff ashlars) with which the Sassi dwellings are built, are obtained from a rock formation known as calcarenite, a sedimentary rock formed of small particles of limestone (it is here called Gravina calcarenite), which is less compact and more friable than actual limestone. The formation process of these rocks was very long and took place between 65 million years ago (Upper Cretaceous) and 2,000,000 years ago (Lower Pleistocene).

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