Southern Italy Escape: Matera

After breakfast this morning we set off, bags in tow, for the car rental agency so we could get an early start to Matera, a 2.5 - 3 hour drive away. The weather report had been predicting rain and the clouds were threatening, but we didn't hit the deluge until Taranto, about 2/3 of the way to Matera. To add insult to injury, there was a lot of road construction and detours and we somehow found ourselves going around in circles, as if Taranto was that infamous Boston MTA train in the Kingston Trio song... we wondered if we would "ever return". We finally did figure our way out of the maze and as soon as we left Taranto, the rains stopped. From there it was smooth sailing to Matera.

Matera is an incredibly unique city filled with sassi, cave and stone houses built into the side of a ravine. These homes have been inhabited since the Paleolithic age and, until the early 1950's had no running water or bathroom facilities, so the sanitary conditions were abominable. Italy passed a law in 1952 condemning the sassi as unsanitary and forcibly moved its inhabitants to government built housing outside of town.

We toured one of the sassi districts and viewed underground churches, cisternas (cisterns for holding water), cantinas (wine cellars), and a refurbished cave dwelling depicting what life was like living in a sassi. Typically, a sassi housed a family unit with 6-7 children all living in a small 4 room cave: the kitchen/children's bedroom area, the parent's bedroom/eating area, the stable for the animals, and the wine cellar/food storage area. The pictures below don't do the area justice, but will give you an idea of what the sassi looks like.