Who knew that I lived just an hour or so away from Italy’s sister attraction to one in my own home State of Tennessee?

For those of you who aren’t from Tennessee (or haven’t been through East TN going to Florida ) there are signs all over the place down I-75 proclaiming “See Rock City!”. It’s on billboards, painted on barns, and even shows up on big rocks along the road. Matera could probably use the same advertising campaign, cause it really is a rock city (or a cave city, cause these rocks have a lot of holes in them). As a matter of fact, up until about the 1950’s there were still people living in cave houses there (for some not so much a choice as it was a lack of options). Now, honestly, it’s not like there aren’t a lot of rocks around where I live, but Matera looks like somebody moved a chunk of landscape from outside Jerusalem and planted it in the middle of Italy. It actually looks so similar that they filmed portions of the Passion of the Christ movie there (specifically the Crucifixion scene).

Historically, Matera was kind of like an Italian Siberia, people were often exiled there because it’s in the middle of nowhere (or it was at the time anyway, there still is no train service to the city – which in Europe apparently makes you a backwater). Anyway, sometime during the middle of last century it sort of became a black eye to the country and some efforts were made to improve things there…like moving people out of caves (Interestingly enough Mussolini had a hand in a lot of it). There are different sections called Sassi (plural for Sasso, which means stone…obviously from the office of clever names) that were worked on. More modern homes were built on top of caves in these areas and on the side of the hill, a water system was added (to their credit, they did have a pretty elaborate and well thought out system of cisterns going before that), and some more modern roads were put in. Upgrading the place is an ongoing thing, and there are still some parts of the city that are abandoned (this is mostly the structures under the more modern buildings).

As for the tour, getting anywhere in Matera by foot is a bit of a hike, whether that be in the city or across the valley on the rocky slopes (which is a kinda redundant description really). There is uphill, and there is downhill, and there is very little in-between.  Should you ever visit, I suggest hiking boots (and maybe one leg that’s sorter than the other). The views of course are pretty impressive, from inside and outside the city.  There is a large old church that dominates the “top” of the hill the city sits on which is pretty remarkable. We didn’t get to go in it though because it was being worked on.

On the other side of the valley from the city (there is a river/stream running at the bottom) there are…you guessed it, more caves! Don’t look so shocked. Only these weren’t lived in so much but they were instead turned into churches, over 100 in fact. They weren’t large (which is probably why there were so many, think a 20 person church with a hundred or so overflow rooms) but they decorated a lot of them with frescos. Unfortunately, back when university and museum types discovered said frescos they took chunks of them back home with them, usually the faces.  The rock church we got to see was under lock and key so it was missing some faces but not all of them.  There are also a number of long trails that go from one side to the other, which the people of Matera used back in the day to go to work in the fields (where they grew rocks and a few vegetables.) We didn’t go for any hikes, but instead thanked our excellent tour guide and went our separate ways. So, if you’re in Southern Italy, “Vedere sasso citta!”  The advertising ain’t gonna start itself…

Inside the City

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