When we could hear the rain outside before we rose this
morning, we didn’t have high hopes for a comfortable day’s travel, so we had a
leisurely breakfast with a couple of extra espressos. By the time we hit the road, there was barely
a mist in the foggy air. Tom had used
his Norwegian go-to weather forecasting website and felt that this would be a
good day to visit Matera, in the neighboring region of Basilicata.
By late morning, the skies had cleared, the sun was shining
brightly and Matera was glowing. We’d
visited there several years ago and wanted to return to the other-worldly city
of sassi, cave homes and churches
hewn out of the rock of a steep ravine that drops below the modern city. The sassi
are among the oldest inhabited human settlements in the world, and systems of
canals and sewage had made them desirable habitations for centuries. However, the prosperity of the town led to
overcrowding in the 19th century, and caves without running water
were used to house very large families and their livestock. In the late 1950’s, after exposés and
unfavorable publicity, the government forced the evacuation of the many of the
inhabitants. The sassi are now a UNESCO World Heritage site and the movement toward
gentrification has been strong. There
are high-end accommodations, and lots of bars, and restaurants to serve the
large numbers of tourists who visit. 
We
had a wonderful time, highlighted by a visit to a cave church, with ancient
frescoes and fossilized shells embedded in the surrounding rock, and an
adjacent cave home. Our guide was an
elderly gentleman who had grown up in the home.
He showed us and an Italian couple through the cave, showed us photos of
his parents and siblings as children and the utensils and furnishings of their
daily life. We could follow only some of
what he said and, when he discovered, at the end of our visit, that we were not
Italian, he was distraught because he had not spoken more slowly, and offered
to re-do everything for us. We declined, but he was still upset about his
perceived mistake.
After our wander among the sassi and up and down the ravine, we drove to a belvedere across
the river for a panoramic view of the many levels of Matera.
We’d read that we could find more cave dwellings,
representative of the way Matera’s sassi
had looked before the UNESCO designation and their subsequent rebirth, at the
nearby town of Ginosa, so we soon found ourselves driving at the bottom of the
ravine there. If you read of the gentrification
of Ginosa or its future UNESCO designation, remember that you read it here
first; trust me, no one else has found it yet!
When we arrived back home, we found that Tommaso had left
yet another gift – tender, young asparagus.
After happy hour, we drove into Martina Franca for a fabulous dinner at
Al Saggitario, which Tommaso had recommended.
We could (should) have stopped after the antipasto -- a wonderful array
of meats, cheeses, vegetables and seafood –but we soldiered on through (some
of) our plates of carpaccio, arugula and padano grana (a local cheese), beef
and porcini mushrooms, and a Pugliese specialty, fava beans and chicory. I think we brought home enough for two more
dinners, and we still ate far more than we should have. It’s a good thing we don’t do that every
night!
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