Sassi Matera

By rights, the title of this post should be either “The Sassi of Matera” or “Matera’s Sassi,” not “Sassi Matera.”

Google Translate tells me that the Italian word “sassi” translates into “stones” in English. The singular is sasso.

The sassi of Matera are rock districts where its old town’s cave dwellings and churches (and now restaurants and hotels) are.

But spellchecker insists “Sassi” is wrong and autocorrect frequently wants to correct it to either “Sass” or “Sassy.” I figured if I missed that in the title and didn’t change it back to “Sassi” you’d think it wasn’t one of my great many typos, but, rather, I was either talking about the sassy part of Matera or I was telling you to give Matera some sass, depending on which correction autocorrect went with.

Sassy is not an adjective that immediately comes to mind for me in reference to Matera. Historical, breathtaking, evocative, charming, gorgeous, sure. But sassy isn’t top of mind with regard to Matera for me.

And I would never tell you to sass Matera. My experience so far is it’s a wonderful city. Treat it with respect, not sass.

But I’d rather mislead you than have you think I’ve made yet another typo.

Then again, “Sassi Matera” is grammatically incorrect. So now you think less of me for its use throughout this post.

Then yet again,, if I went with “Matera’s Sassi” as the title, it would have served the same purpose. With the apostrophe as a contraction, it could mean “Matera is sassy” if autocorrect went with sassy as the incorrect correction. Or with it as a possessive, it could have meant “the sass belonging to Matera” if it went with sass. But never mind that. I’ve already wasted far too much of your time on thiw nonsense, which probably lowered you opinion of me even farther, it that’s at all possible.

My guidebook lists sights in only two sassi, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano. From looking at a map, I know there more sassi, but I don’t know how many. The most accurate I can get is a few or so sassi.

One of Matera’s Sassi: Sasso Caveoso

Before launching into what I saw in Sasso Caveoso, a story that my most loyal reader knows well because it’s about her.

She’s fluent in Italian. She knows that biscotti, the Italian hard-as-rocks biscuits, is plural. The singular is biscotto. But people in the English-speaking part of North America, and probably elsewhere, at least those who don’t know much or any Italian, use biscotti as both plural and singular. My regular reader can’t bring herself to do that. But she also knows that people will look at her like she’s crazy if she asks someone who doesn’t know Italian for a biscotto. To square the circle, if she wants a biscotto she asks for “one of your biscotti.”

In that vein, Sasso Caveoso is one of Matera’s sassi.

(As much as I love Matera, I’m looking forward to not having to fight with autocorrect to let me type “sassi.”)

Casa Noha

Casa Noha is a former cave dwelling that is now something of a museum.

I say “something of” because there are exceptionally few artifacts. One small room contains a table and an old stove, but that’s about it for artifacts.

Casa Noha is mostly four videos that describe the origins, the rise, the fall into poverty and depredation, the abandonment, and the rebirth of the sassi of Matera.

The experience starts in one room of the former dwelling where a member of the staff gives a brief introduction in Italian and then in English. The first of the videos plays on the walls in that room. When it’s done, visitors move on to another room for a video that plays on a wall there. Then it moves on to another video in another room. After that visitors return to the first room for the last video.

In total, the videos last about a half an hour. Everyone who visits Casa gets a headset plugged into a radio receiver on a lanyard for use during their visit. Through that, they can hear the sound track in either Italian, English, or French. The soundtrack played through the headset plays over an Italian soundtrack played on speakers. I imagine it would be annoying listening to the Italian both through the headset and, in the background, the speakers if the two aren’t perfectly synchronized. I don’t know if the synchronization was perfect because my receiver was set to the English channel.

The videos provide a wealth of information about the sassi. Regular readers know well not to expect me to remember much of it. But I do remember a few things.

When farmers first moved into the area, I think about a millennium ago, they found the naturally formed caves in the sides of the gorge of the Gravina River. The caves were unoccupied, but there were signs that they had been occupied in previous eras.

The farmers had implements for carving and excavating stone that the previous occupants didn’t have. So they started expanding and shaping the caves to make them more suitable for their homes and churches, and excavating new caves.

Then they started expanding them outward with stone-block buildings in front. This might explain some of what I thought were standalone stone block buildings yesterday.

In the traditional cave dwellings of sassi Matera, occupants kept animals inside their caves. I’ll go into more detail on that in a section on Casa-Grotta di Vico Solitario, below.

Chiesa Madonna de Idris and San Giovanni

As the Italian word chiesa makes clear, Chiesa Madonna de Idris e San Giovani is a church, or more accurately two churches. What chiesa doesn’t make clear is they’re churches in caves.

Signs throughout throughout the interior say:

Those signs are joined by signs with icons with slashes through them to forbid cameras (with or without flashes), unappetizing looking food, handsome dogs, and cell phones.

So, I can post only a picture of the fairly plain exterior here. Pity.

Inside, there is a small cave with a simple altar and frescoes. That cave is the Madonna de Idris church.

It’s connected to the somewhat larger San Giovanni church by an opening between the caves. There are multiple frescoes in there as well.

Throughout both churches, the frescoes are in varying conditions. Some are barely there. Others are there, but quite faded. In the San Giovanni church, there are two side-by-side frescoes that are in excellent condition. I assume, but don’t know, they were recently restored.

Chiesa Santa Lucia Alle Malve

Next, I moved on to the Chiesa Santa Lucia Alle Malve.

Again they forbid photos inside. The same text and icon signs as in the previous churches declared that prohibition. And, in case anyone missed the multitudinous signs inside, the person at entrance specifically said that pictures couldn’t be taken inside.

Why are they so anal retentive about photo-taking? Surprisingly, the churches didn’t have gift shops. So they weren’t trying to convince people to buy postcards and books with images of the churches and its frescoes.

There is a charge to enter. People taking photos and showing them to friends and relatives, or posting them to, ahem, online travel journals, might convince other people that this is something they should see in person for themselves. But, no.

But, never mind that. Let’s move on. (Harumph.)

The Chiesa Santa Lucia Alle Malve is more cavernous than the above churches in terms of height, but it probably has a smaller footprint than the combined Idris and San Giovanni churches.

Again, there are a number of frescoes on the walls, also in various states. One is faded to almost invisibility. A couple are seriously chipped away at. And a few are in good condition. Again I assume, but don’t know, that recent restoration played a major part in that good condition.

There’s also a painted statue of I don’t know what material in a small niche on one of the walls.

As with all of the churches, this one was excavated out from the original cave to create a larger one shaped more like the idea of a church of the people of the time. That excavation is dated to circa the 9th century CE.

Casa-Grotta di Vico Solitario

Casa-Grotta di Vico Solitario is a former cave dwelling that is set up with old furnishings to give people, myself included, a taste of what traditional life was like in sassi Matera before the dwellings were abandoned for more than 30 years in the 1950s.

Woohoo! Photos are allowed inside.

Before entering, one of the staff shows visitors a QR code she wears on a lanyard. Scanning the QR code took me to a web page where I could listen to an audio file, in the language of my choice, providing background on this particular cave dwelling and traditional sassi life in general.

Apropos of nothing, the languages are listed as, and I quote: “Italiano, English, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, …” So, if you are unilingual and your language is Italian or English, you’re good. If your language is another of the offered ones, but you don’t know and can’t guess the English word for your language, you’re out of luck.

I provided a link to that web page so you can listen to the commentary yourself if you wish. But, since I promised earlier to tell you about the animals that were kept in the caves, I’ll provide a spoiler here. We’re not talking about, cute, frisky little cats, or playful, loving dogs or, at least, not just them. I don’t know if people back then also kept any of those animals inside their rock abodes.

We’re talking about horses, cows, pigs, and chickens. In the cave. Where people lived. There were trenches for manure. Inside the caves where people lived. I don’t imagine that was terribly pleasant.

People didn’t use the trenches for their biological evacuations. They used rarely emptied chamberpots. There were no sewage facilities in the caves.

Casa-Grotta di Vico Solitario displayed an equipped kitchen area, a bed, chests of drawers, the manure trench sans manure, a fake horse to give a feel of the animals kept inside, an empty room, a cistern that was, back in the day, filled with rainwater or water hauled up from the river, and various bric-a-brac.

For the pictures in this selection I provided one of the fake horse because it was rather kitschy and therefore noteworthy. I also assembled a collage of the other images I took inside. The collage makes it look like Casa-Grotta di Vico Solitario is bigger than it is. Many of the images are from one small space pointing in different directions, there are only about four rooms.

I think I have more floorspace in my small condo than there was in that cave dwelling. But I don’t think the board of my condo will let me keep horses, pigs, or chickens in my unit. I’ll have to ask.

Another Sasso of Sassi Matera: Sasso Barisano

Chiesa San Pietro Barisano

This church cave dates back to the 12th to 13th century CE. It’s bigger than the ones above and contains a few altars, including its high altar. There are also a number of frescos, again in varying states. And this church has some stone sculptures, including some that are reliefs.

San Pietro Barisano was expanded over the centuries, with the last major expansion happening in the 15th – 16th century CE. Like any old building, people want to see a refresh of the place every once in a while. The restructuring that resulted in the current form of the church happened practically yesterday, in the 18th century.

You might have guessed by the lack of interior shots, that they ban photography by the visiting plebs in this church too. The signage was the same as in the other churches.

Chiesa di Madonna delle Virtù & Chiesa di San Nicola del Greci

Chiesa di Madonna delle Virtù & Chiesa di San Nicola del Greci Is not so much a couple of churches, but a monastic complex. When I was there, there was an exhibition of modern tile paintings in the front rooms. But there was also an original fresco or two visible.

Up some stairs there were are barren cave dwellings. I don’t know if they were part of the monastic complex and occupied by the monks at one time or if lay people occupied them. The signage just said “cave dwellings.”

The Chiesa di Madonna delle Virtù part was built circa the 10th or 11th century CE and restored in the 17th century.

Again, I created and posted a collage of pictures from in there.

Lunch

As you can tell, it was a busy morning. And I didn’t even mention all of the time I spent getting lost despite paying close attention to Google Maps. Google Maps wasn’t always terribly accurate about telling me where I was. It often told me I was walking through building walls and the buildings themselves. I don’t think that’s one of my superpowers. My only superpower is worrying.

And I don’t think Google Map knows about all of the little lanes and stairways in Matera. Most, but not all.

As a result, lunch was late.

I found a nice restaurant, where they gave me a table on a landing of a staircase. It was the only table on that landing.

That doesn’t sound like a terribly appealing location, but it was amazing. The landing has a large picture window looking out on sassi Matera and a little beyond. What an amazing place to spend another hour-long lunch.

That lunch included a pasta with sausage and flecks of, I think fried, red peppers. There were in essence two sauces. One was tomato-based, the other cream. Life is good.

Life is even better with wine and an espresso. So, of course, I had those too.

Bye for now. See you again this afternoon.