Water collection
Millennial water system of the Sassi of Matera
The rainwater harvesting system that has taken place over the centuries in this extraordinary thousand-year-old city led the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) to decide in 1993 to include Matera in its list of historic sites to be protected. The imposing beauty of the Sassi from the most diverse angles of the city might make it seem that the merit of Matera was its aesthetic beauty, but no, the reason Matera became a UNESCO World Heritage Site is because of its rainwater harvesting system, in fact Matera’s historical features are hidden right under itself, underground.
The need to conserve water drove the people of Matera to the invention of a water system that would carry water for almost the entire city, conserving it at the same time in cisterns communicating with each other; the proverb
necessity and poverty sharpen the wit
expresses what prompted the invention of this water system, having to thirst animals, wash clothes and use water for a variety of useful purposes was a must in order to survive, managing to waste as little of it as possible during the dry months.
Throughout the historical area that runs from the highest point of the city down to the ancient Sassi quarters, you will find many cisterns, but you must be able to distinguish private cisterns from public water collection systems; every house-cave in the Sassi had at least one private cistern to satisfy the most ‘demanding’ family needs, then there were the Palombari, which were very large cisterns of a different shape from the previous ones that could be accessed publicly.
The water collection in Via Purgatorio Vecchio,12.
The Palombaro for the collection of public water was found during restoration work about fifteen years ago and can now be visited at Via Purgatorio Vecchio,12.
This palombaro is the final point of public water collection in the Sasso Caveoso, commissioned in 1800 by Monsignor Di Macco; right at the entrance it is possible to see the rainwater conduits that connected the cisterns in cascades; the water, coming from the highest part of the city, flowed into the cisterns using the system of communicating vessels, arriving in this palombaro located in the lower part of the Sasso Caveoso.
The Long Dipper in Piazza Vittorio Veneto
The Palombaro Lungo can be visited by accessing it from the central square of the city of Matera; this palombaro is the largest public water reservoir in the city of Matera.
To visit the Palombaro Lungo it is necessary to purchase a ticket at the entrance, visits are accompanied by guides and last about 30 minutes.
