Saturday, October 18, 2008
This morning, we drove northwest, almost all the way across the "boot", to Matera. The trip there was quite varied in scenery first with mountains covered with trees, reminding us of upstate New York, and then areas devoted or previously devoted to agriculture which looked pretty dry similar to some of the farmland of eastern Colorado or Nebraska with some evidence of the emigration from these areas in abandoned farmhouses. And every once in a while there would be a mountain topped by a town with the cream colored houses so typical of this area of the country.
This morning, we drove northwest, almost all the way across the "boot", to Matera. The trip there was quite varied in scenery first with mountains covered with trees, reminding us of upstate New York, and then areas devoted or previously devoted to agriculture which looked pretty dry similar to some of the farmland of eastern Colorado or Nebraska with some evidence of the emigration from these areas in abandoned farmhouses. And every once in a while there would be a mountain topped by a town with the cream colored houses so typical of this area of the country.
Matera is the site of the sassi, believed to be the oldest dwellings in Europe. These cave dwellings, layered one upon the other on the sides of a steep ravine, were once inhabited by religious hermits, who also established many cave churches. Eventually, they became homes for families; by 1950, 15,000 people, half the city’s population, lived in the sassi. The homes were squalid; a cave typically housed a family with six children (despite a 50% infant mortality rate!!). Somehow, they literally carved out room within the cave for their animals: generally a donkey, a goat, a hen and her chicks! We visited one such cave, which had been occupied until the late 1950’s, and which contained the family’s original furnishings.
The outcry caused by Carlo Levi’s description of the deprivation of life in the sassi in his book, Christ Stopped at Eboli, forced the government to act. During the period from the early 1950’s until the late1960’s, the sassi population was forced to relocate to planned communities on the outskirts of the city. In 1993, the area was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site and since then, things have been cleaned up and "prettied up". The upper layers of the caves have been re-populated and many have been converted into restaurants, cafes, B and B’s, shops, even a four-star hotel! Though the caves can still be seen lining the ravine, it’s now hard to imagine them as family homes less than fifty years ago.
Tomorrow, it will be another trip into the past as we head up the coast to the ancient Greek ruins at Paestum.
Ciao for this Saturday night!
Mel and Tom
No comments:
Post a Comment