Matera’s New Town

Due to a late lunch, I didn’t have a lot of time to do stuff this afternoon. I spent it visiting three sights in what my guidebook refers to as Matera’s new town.

I have trouble calling it new other than in the context of Matera’s older town, its saasi, which I focused on this morning.

One of the sights I visited this afternoon dates from the 16th century. Another dates from the 13th century.

A new town can include buildings that old? Doesn’t that break any rules?

Back home in Toronto, we consider a structure older than 100 years to be old. Anything older than 150 is ancient. And we don’t have very many old or ancient buildings left even by our definitions.

But in Europe cities with a truly ancient history, “Yeah, it’s got a few buildings several centuries old. So what about that doesn’t make it the new town.”

Context matters, folks. Context matters.

New Town

The three sites I visited were Palombaro Lungo, Matera’s cathedral, and the Museo Nazionale Ridola.

Palombaro Lungo, 16th Century Cistern in Matera’s “New Town”

Palombaro Lungo is the only sight in Matera’s new town that my guidebook gives a star to. To be fair, it’s very stingy with stars.

I tried pasting “Palombaro Lungo” into Google Translate and it returned “Long Diver” as the English for that Italian. What, in fact, is it? It’s a large hole excavated under the surface above it.

Palombaro Lungo was excavated in the 16th century as a cistern. The leaflet handed out at the site tells me it’s the largest cistern in town.

Matera is a fair size city, still “the largest in Matera” doesn’t sound like a monumental hurdle to leap over.

Today, it’s not a cistern. It’s a tourist attraction.

After paying the admission fee, I climbed down a metal-grate stairwell the equivalent of, maybe, two or three storeys or so into the cavernous space.

At the bottom, I walked along a metal-grate catwalk over the very shallow water that’s there today.

How shallow? If there were any goldfish down there and one put on a little weight it would have trouble staying fully under water as it swum around.

I exaggerate, but if more than a few families depended entirely on the water in the cistern these days it wouldn’t be long before they died of dehydration or poor hygiene.

(Just to be clear, no goldfish were harmed in the writing of this post. There were no goldfish, or any other type of fish, down there. It was an analogy.)

Having said that, my guidebook says that it was still a supply water to Matera within living memory. Not my living memory, obviously, as that doesn’t extend much further back than when I started typing this sentence. Filled, it had a 5-million litre capacity.

After walking along the catwalk, I came to another roughly equivalent stairwell. I climbed up it figuring there was a separate exit there.

Nope.

There was no exit up there or even a peephole on the outside world. There was just a platform that provides a better view down into the capacious former cistern than was available from the top of the other stairs.

I took in the dark view, walked back down the stairs, across the catwalk, and back up the other stairs and left.

It’s a big, deep void that looks ominous, particularly with the blue and white lights they cast on it. I’m not disappointed I went. But if you’re going to be sparing with your distribution of stars you can probably do better.

Matera’s “New Town” Cathedral

Matera’s Cathedral is in the new town, which is above the sassi. But it’s in a bit of a depression and between two sassi that sweep down below it.

As I said, this 13th century cathedral is in Matera’s new town. Go figure.

According to my guidebook, it’s a “Pugliese-Romanesque cathedral” with “neobaroque excess” inside. Um. Okay.

The tourist entrance is not through the front of the cathedral. Ir’s off to the side,

After buying a ticket at the ticket office, tourists such as myself have to first walk through a small museum containing a variety of religious objects. Many of them are made of silver and golden silver.

What is golden silver? Is golden silver to gold as the Louis Vuitton and Chanel bags you can buy from vendors in some cities selling them cheaply off blankets on the sidewalks of some tourist areas are to real Louis Vuitton and Chanel bags?

After passing through the museum, I got into the cathedral itself. It’s not terribly large, but it’s quite attractive.

There are some frescoes on the side walls toward the back, other paintings elsewhere, paintings on the ceiling, and a super-size crown hanging off one wall above a pillar between two arches. There is also a small section where you can look down on an excavation a little ways below the floor level.

There are two large panels sitting on the floor on one side toward the back. Both contain considerable text, one in Italian, the other in English, about Saint John. He was born in Matera in 1080 by “unknown parents.” Unknown parents? Surely the parents must have known who they were, or at least his mother.

The not yet saint John moved around a bit as an adult and died in 1139 at S. Giacomo monastery of Foggia. His body later got moved to Pulsano in 1177.

Fast forward a little over six and a half centuries. John had lived a pious life and in 1830 an Archbishop surveyed John’s remains and placed them in a wooden reliquary. The reliquary was moved to Matera the same year. Two days after its arrival in Matera a crippled boy recovered. A miracle! John’s first miracle, in fact. And only six and a half centuries after he died.

Some years later, that boy was ordained as a priest. Another something or other.

Now you know.

Museo Nazionale Ridola

The Museo Nazionale Ridola is an interesting little archaeological museum focusing on Neolithic finds and Greek pottery.

The non-greek archaeological artifacts are what you would expect. A large old bone fossil. Stone tools. Stone and clay vessels. Etc. The Greek items were primarily elaborately decorated urns of various sizes, including one quite large urn, and other vessels.

When I was there, the path through the museum started in a temporary exhibit with a video on whales, their reality, and their role in myth and literature. Past the video room a display talked specifically about the whale of Lake San Giuliano. I don’t think San is related to Rudy in anyway, but I don’t know.

It was all very interesting, but as I type this up I’ve been hit with a sudden wave of tiredness. So that’s enough of that.

Matera Summary

The lack of enthusiasm of this post due to tiredness notwithstanding, as evidenced by my other posts on Matera, I love this city, including the, for lack of a better term, “new town.”

My only one and a half days here doesn’t begin to do it justice, There are sassi I didn’t walk through. There are other sites in the new town I didn’t see.

There are hiking trails down the Matera sassi side of the gorge, across a footbridge over the river, and up the other side of the gorge to the raw caves over there. It looks like a wonderful, not overly long hike. I heard it takes about two hours return, although that estimate may be for people younger than I am. But I think I could have made it as long as I’m allowed to do considerable huffing and puffing. I didn’t do that hike because of a lack of time, but I would have liked to.

As I predicted in my first post on Matera, as I prepare to leave tomorrow morning, I’m sorry I didn’t have more time here.