Matera, Italy
The Appian Way runs from Rome to Brindisi, crossing Italy from sea to sea. I can close my eyes and imagine long lines of Roman soldiers, with gleaming shields and helmets, marching behind their officers riding in chariots or on horses, all on their way to or from the capital, Rome. Matera, closer to the other sea, offered a tranquil stop along the way for its visitors from many countries over the centuries, including the Emperor's soldiers. On today's maps, it is referred to as SS7. And in April 2003 a couple of American cruisers recommended we drive it on a land adventure.
Matera is famous for its houses carved out of the mountain. These began as caves for early man, then hermits and monks used them for self-isolation. Over time these expanded and became dwellings inside the rock for families and communities. That is, until the Minister of Health visited in the 1950s, saw the unhygienic conditions people lived in and forcefully removed about 20,000 to another location. Sassi Barisano and Sassi Caveoso, are today considered a World Heritage Site, and with fix-up monies, people are returning. At the same time, tourists flock to Matera, visit the sassis, walk the stone streets, and look inside the 8th to 13th century churches-all in an attempt to imagine life in such a unique place along the historic Appian Way.
We arrived in the afternoon and made arrangements for a private guide the next morning. Nadia Garlatti, a licensed guide who spoke excellent English, took us on a trip through time, explaining 8th century frescoes (what was left of them) on up to Mel Gibson recently directing a movie there (soon to be released).
She at first took us to a vantage point overlooking Sassi Barisano. "Imagine your roof is someone else's floor," she pointed out. Well, sounds normal, but she explained that things in old Matera never seemed normal. They built the cave houses from the top down. The oldest buildings were at the peak around the cathedral. As the village grew, other dwellings had to be built. So, they cut into the mountain beneath the existing places, making roofs out of floors in an upside down fashion. This continued, leaving many layers in a spilled out pattern. There were no doors, no windows, no electricity, running water, toilets-all the conveniences we take for granted. Animals lived in these cave places with them. In fact, a horse in your possession made you a rich man. You could get to your fields in good time and return. Walking took too long. A mule or donkey could also be used for transportation, but owning a horse ranked you well.
With no door you are open to your friends, but vulnerable to the elements and to potential dangers. However, with no light except near the entrance, the person inside had the advantage of hiding and then defending himself if threatened. The one outside had to change vision from daylight to dark.
Without much light inside they must have slept a lot and all together for warmth. And security. Wood for camp type fires had to be rationed; cooking the top priority. If you got up early and found a pair of shoes, whether they fit or not, you wore them and kept warm. Same for clothes.
Nadia mentioned "natural selection" several times. If a mother had 10 children and 6 died, she would proudly say, 4 lived. We visited a dwelling in Sassi Caveoso laid out for tourists to see how a family would live in a large room divided into small cooking area, with one large bed (high enough for chickens to stay beneath it), a stall for horse or mule, storage cupboards for their grain and animals' fodder, ceramic potty with cover, a table with 2 chairs and one bowl for all the family members to eat from. If the bowl got broken somehow, that gave one or two of the children a piece of it so they didn't have to scramble for fistfuls of food along with the others. And she showed us some poppy seeds hanging on the wall. Apparently the mothers made a brew, she called it "tea," for the children to drink before the moms left with their husbands for days in the fields (which might have been far away). The children who survived the absence by being drugged, made it. Again, both examples of natural selection she said.
We also visited several ancient churches. Only one, San Pietro Caveoso, still had services regularly. All had frescoes, but most in pretty bad shape. You could see where people had physically damaged the original painting by removing a head, or count the layers of frescoes painted on top of another. Frescoes had been damaged by water along the walls, fire too close to them, or even animal breath when people took over a section of a monastery or church as living space. With the monies available now for restoring and keeping these treasures for the future, Nadia is afraid they (the people who should care) don't care. And day by day the frescoes are dying.
Inside two churches, San Pietro Barisano and Madonna dell Idris, Nadia took us down below the main level to the crypts. There we saw seats out of stone along the wall sections for special people's burial, and she pointed out the trap door right over the center of the crypt area where others were just dropped in and piled up. The smell must have been awful! On the side of each chair a canal had been dug for the body fluids to drain onto the floor as they left the body. And outside in the open graveyard, bodies were left in a shallow rock indentation, along with the same type of canal for body fluid drainage.
Three frescoes left impressions on me. One complete life sized ones of Benedict and his sister, Scholastica, founders of their monastic orders. Another, an 8th century saint of the eyes. Inside and outside of the chapel were paintings showing different aspects of this saint, focusing exclusively on the eyes. In the other one, found in Santa Lucia alla Malve, Mary, is dressed in a blue gown next to the skin, as in Byzantine paintings, Nadia said. The strangest part is Jesus looks as if he is nursing, but her breast is misplaced-up at her shoulder.
The four chapels called Convicino di Sant Antonio are linked together near the end of Sassi Caveoso. The most interesting part of these churches is the perfectly temperatured wine cellars in each, where the monks made and distributed their wine. It had places for stomping grapes, making wine, storing barrels and sampling the wines-both reds and whites. But no more, they were abandoned when the sassis were emptied.
San Francisco d'Assisi church, right in the middle of Sassi Barisano, has been totally renovated inside into Baroque style. Nadia told us they made a giant new altar over the oldest fresco, completely covering it. An recent earthquake moved the altar so now the famous fresco can be seen again. One of the mysteries of life. We were not allowed in as the church was presently closed.
To go from old to new and still focus on old, she told us about Mel Gibson coming to Matera this past winter and directing a religious themed film, due out this summer. She did not know the official title, but pointed out Miss Italy is one of the stars, said it would be subtitled, described great scenery constructed to complete the town walls and enclose a Beduoin camp, and told us a "last dinner" had been celebrated in one of the cave homes for the film. I'll look forward to seeing the camels in the movie milling around in the area marked with a PARKING sign on my tour day.
We drove inland on the way back to Gaeta over high portions of the Appian Way, having driven mostly freeway from Gaeta to Matera.