Southern Trip: Matera, Italia

11.08-09.2008
Matera, Italia

Matera is without a doubt one of the most fascinating towns I’ve ever visited in my life. It is situated between two hills (rocks, or sassi) and spills down into the valley between. The coolest part is that the homes there are literally carved into the face of the rock. Sometimes only one face of a room would actually be constructed, the rest was just excavation! We all thought this sounded fun, but I don’t think any of us actually believed the full extent of it until we walked into our hotel rooms and were greeted with exposed rock for the walls and arched ceilings. We got settled into our rooms, then trooped back up to the lobby for a drawing lesson with Tom (some people actually had a ways to go, as the hotel was by no means on cohesive building, but rather many separate rooms situated over the sassi). Tom is an incredible artist and his thought processes boggle and fascinate me. His lesson was mostly about shading and tone, which was interesting, but I’ve really enjoyed working in pen this semester (which he’s a huge advocate against), so I could only take so much away from it, though. There were some interesting parts about drawing construction that I learned from and have been trying to apply, though.
After the lesson, we all went out to dinner together to a restaurant Cinzia had reserved for us and where our food would be on the program (it was a good day for meals!). We sat down and were brought some appetizers (grilled and chilled eggplant and zucchini with various sauces and mint), both of which were delicious. Next came a plate of bruscetta. Just as we were all preparing for a main dish to come soon, but the waiters just kept bringing appetizer after appetizer! We then figured that the meal was just tapas-style, but then Cinzia told us that there would later be two pasta dishes and dessert! The amount of food served (and consumed) that night was ridiculous. Among our tasty appetizers were: stuffed artichoke hearts, fried bread balls, ricotta, broccoli rabe, white bean paste over chicory, an egg and rice torte, red peppers stuffed with veggie stuffing, warm, very bitter olives, and probably a few others I can’t remember. The pasta dishes were good, but all of us were so full at that point that we couldn’t fit any more food in our stomachs. We did somehow manage to eat desert, though, which was a white cake with alcohol-soaked pineapple. We all had a ton of fun throughout the night. At one point I decided to do an “ugly photo shoot” and told everyone to make ugly faces as I went around the tables. Every time we look at them now, we still laugh hysterically.
When we got back to our hotel rooms, most people decided that they were going to either finish up some unfinished work or go to sleep, but a group of us decided to explore the town instead. We walked around for a while, up and down the hills, and at the base of the valley found a ravine. It was so deep that we couldn’t see into it, which was actually a bit creepy. Sarah even tried take super-long exposure pictures with her camera, and it was so dark that still nothing came out. The heart of Matera is so nutty that none of the streets actually have names because, let’s be real, they’re not even streets. They’re all just tiny little paths that wind in and around the buildings. I think some of us had maps, but as there were no street names and not many landmarks, they were pretty useless. We ended up just wandering in the direction we thought our hotel might be and eventually made our way back. Along the way, though we found many creepy dark corners and holes in walls. We psyched ourselves out and actually got pretty scared at points, especially when Jeff threw a rock into a black hole and birds came flying out at him. We did eventually find our ways back to the hotel, but the front gate was locked. Sarah’s and my room was the only one on the other side (out of our group), as everyone else’s was down the hill. Our roommates who were already in the room had the keys, and I didn’t want to wake them up by calling, so I somehow managed to climb over a wall, scurry down the side of some stairs, and make it into our room and bring Sarah the keys. I went to bed pretty quickly after our adventures!
The next morning, there were four of us girls all needing to shower, so I had to get up fairly early so that we could all have a turn. I had a fair amount of extra time to kill before breakfast and heading out for the day, so I sat on our terrace and sketching a portion of the town. As fascinating as it had looked by night, it was also fabulous (or as Cinzia would pronounce it, “fab-oh-lous”) by day. And the view from our room was amazing! We were situated right in the middle of it all. Eventually I got breakfast (including tasty but quite un-breakfast-y pizza foccacia things) and we headed out as a studio. We walked down into the bottom of the valley between the rocks, then climbed up to the other side towards the town’s Duomo. Unfortunately, they were doing some major restorations, so we couldn’t go inside. Turning around did, however, give us a stunning view of the town from the other side we’d been looking from the night before.
We carried on and kept walking, this time south towards one of the city walls. Perched on the edge were two churches: one freestanding, and one atop a chunk of stone that looked like it had just been carved right in. Before going into the freestanding church (Santi Pietro e Paolo-Saints Peter and Paul), we looked out from the town, across the ravine below (once again down a huge hill), and to the next set of sassi. The hillside was a mixture of grass and rock, and there were many cave dwellings cut into the rocks, of which you could still see the openings. The church interior, once we were inside, we discovered wasn’t anything too special. It did have a beautiful painted wooden ceiling, but other than that was a bit plain (not that I’m into gaudy churches or anything). The other church atop the rock was closed, but we did go to another one that was cut into the rock on the backside. This one, Santa Lucia alle Malve, was fascinating! It was from the 9th-10th centuries, so not many of its frescoes remained, but a few could still be seen. There was a hint of the typical nave and 2 aisles setup of a church, but as it was entirely cut from rock had been distorted and looked distinctively handmade. Many of the ancient churches we see are so clean cut that it’s easy to forget that construction was all done by hand and without modern machinery. This church was a wonderful reminder of the sheer amount of work that went into these projects.
We also went into a former cave dwelling that had been converted into a small museum. The dwelling consisted of one main room, with a smaller back room for storage, a small kitchen niche, and an area penned off for the family livestock, usually a mule. We learned that typically a 6 person family would live in such a dwelling, use a cistern for their water supply, and keep the mule inside for heat in the winter. Although a bit hokey with its furnishings, fake life-size mule, and narration, it did give a fascinating picture of life living in the sassi. The craziest part? People lived in homes like this until the 1960’s when the Italian president declared the lifestyle “shameful” and moved them all out into more “suitable” housing. Some people did eventually return to the caves, while others remained in the newer part of town.
I just realized how long this entry is getting…sorry! There’s just so much we did and I don’t want to forget any of it!
After the churches and cave, we were given the rest of the morning and early afternoon to explore on our own. Some people decided to hike down the hill, across the ravine, and up the other hill to go explore the other caves. The hills were steep and tall, so the idea sounded ludicrous to me. I was also wearing my Emma Willard flip-flops and a skirt (the gorgeous new one Ali sent me for my birthday!), which was further discouraging, but I decided to try it anyway and turn back whenever it got too difficult. Well…I never ended up turning around! It was tricky, but I ended up safely (and skillfully!) getting up and down both hills. There was a tiny dirt path that switchbacked down the slope, much of which was covered in scrap metal and broken bits of glass. The base of the hills were still dewy, and combined with the 8-ish foot wide stream we had to cross, my flops got very wet and very slippery. We eventually made it to the caves, despite many stinging nettles and some pretty steep parts of the path. They really were just huge caverns carve right into the hill-so cool! We then went to the very top of the hill (at this point it felt like a mountain) and were greeted with a parking lot! Some people actually drove there! This just made us feel even more accomplished for having climbed/hiking the whole thing. We hung out at the top for quite a while, soaking in the view (at this point we were higher than the city of Matera and looking back at it across the valley, see pictures) and taking pictures. Of course we got beautiful panoramic of the landscape, but we also took some awesome group shots…we went nuts taking jumping shots of the whole group midair. It was pretty difficult to get the timing right, but they came out awesome and we had tons of fun! Eventually the time came for us to head back down, across and up. Once we crossed the stream, some people decided to take the shorter route and bypass the switchbacks by just climbing straight up. I decided to try to follow them, and managed it, still in my flops! I’m officially the best flip-flop hiker/climber EVER.
Once we got to the top, panting heavily, we got some water, picked up our bags from the hotel, and grabbed some pizza before meeting our group to head out. The next stop was Amalfi, officially one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been to!

PICTURE: a perfect view: the current town on the left, the old caves on the right…this is what we hiked!