Well… it’s another one of those WOW! days. You can see why Matera got used in the latest No Time To Die, Bond film.
It was a reasonably leisurely start as we opted to take one of the two complimentary shuttles into town from the campsite. Which dropped us off at the end of the Main Street up through the town. There’ll be more about shuttles and a near punch-up at the end of todays’s instalment!
The shuttles ran at 9:30, 13:00, 16:00 and 20:00. We were planning on taking the 9:30 in and the 13:00 back. Then we’d consider whether to bike or shuttle back in again if we were up to it. In the end we quickly decided we needed more time than the 3.5 hours that would give us, so we decided we’d stick around until the 16:00 return and probably not go back in for the evening.
Roughly speaking we wandered into the centre then headed for the cathedral, followed by a Cave House and then the Cave Churches. But this sounds a bit more planned than it was. We modified our route as we talked to the various guides at the main cistern and then the cathedral.
Matera has had people living in the caves and town continuously for over 8,000 years. The town was created by the Romans in the 2nd C BCE and the conversion of some cave houses into cave churches starting in the 8th C CE when Christianity hit the town. The Cathedral sits on a promontory (Cavita – also the administrative sector) that bisects the town into two valleys. Each valley side are called the Sassi and are where the peasant cave dwellings were cut into the rock. The historians go on about the use of “negative architecture” – ie. carving stuff out of the rock to create building rather than adding stuff to the ground in regular “positive architecture”.
So, we headed down Via Domenico Ridola, which then turned into Via Del Corso. This took us past a couple of churches and some plazas.
Which brought us to Plazza Vitoreo Vinito and the Polambaro Lungo. This wasn’t one of our must do stops, but I always like a bit of historical engineering so we took a punt and paid the €3 each to have a look.
And WOW! What a sight! Polombaro Lungo is a 5 million litre communal underground water storage vault. It’s carved out of the fairly soft sandstone but lined with a terracotta plaster that makes it water tight (note to discuss pit linings with Joel! 🤣). The cistern had been used for hundreds of years until the town population got to the point it needed a new water source so an aquifer was constructed in the 1920’s and the cistern fell into disuse. Then the top access holes were built over and the town forgot what the cistern was. It was only when the town decided to relay the stone surface of the square that the cistern was rediscovered and divers went down to map it out. Now you can pay your Euros and descend into the vault. Here’s some pictures…
Obviously the walkways wouldn’t have been there originally, and it would have been full of water!
Polombaro Lungo was a definite highlight for us.
Next we head to the Cathedral, and had a coffee in the square outside. It was at this point we decided to stay for the 16:00 shuttle and we therefore had time to do the Cathedral.
For the Cathedral you have to pay to go through a museum and then into the church.
Apparently lots of churches have crowns for giants, this was about a meter in diameter…
The views from the square outside the Cathedral are stunning, like many other vistas.
But also a rather grotesque griffin eating a baby!?
From the Cathedral we tried to get into a cave house thing that turned out to be an audio visual experience… that was full (Casa Noah). We moved on and went to the Casa Grotta di Vico Solitario.
The Casa Grotta was another bit of a punt. It was recommended on GPSmyCity and by the receptionist at the Cathedral Museum, but we didn’t quite know what to expect. In the end there was a really interesting Cave House, a Snow Store Cave and a rock church cave and a video documentary in another cave.
The Casa Grotta cave house was dressed as it would have been when it was vacated in the 1950’s. The Italian government was so ashamed of the conditions that the 15,000+ inhabitants of the cave houses were living in, that they were all compulsorily evicted and rehoused in new settlements in the town. The cave houses became the property of the town.
The video documentary was almost worth the admission fee itself.
After the cave house we went to the main cave church, sat on atop a rock hill.
This cave church is visible from many of the view points around the town. But you can’t take pictures inside. So that outside shot is all you’re getting!
Inside was an excavated cave dwelling with frescos dating from the 13th and 14th century. We found it off that these hugely important rock paintings (that’s doing them a disservice) weren’t protected in any way.
From there we tried to go and see the Matera Olive Oil Museum (MOOM) and got lost ‘cos the directions petered out. But when we did find it down a back street it was closed and viewings by appointment only! Grrr!
So we then tried find some loos. The WC’s marked on the map were either just not there, or were being cleaned – there were only two sets of loos shown on the tourist map. So we went into hunt of a cafe with a loo… easier said than done, many didn’t have toilets or were restaurants that we didn’t want.
In the end we were so desperate that we went to Gustibus where we went for a meat and cheese platter and some drinks. And a much needed loo stop.
We’d spent nearly 6 hours in Matera at this point and it was time to head back to the shuttle pick up.
Sue needed to have a picture of a self-service ice cream shop…
And then this is where things got a little weird and very irate.
We got back to the pickup point and found a couple of couples also waiting… with 3 dogs. As we waited a few more couples tuned up. So there were probably about a dozen people waiting… and 3 dogs.
When the shuttle arrived a guy with Marge Simpson interpretation of a head, and a woman were in the van. The couples with the dogs made to get into the van but the Marge guy said, only one dog per shuttle trip. But the dog couples still proceeded to get into the van with their dogs.
We later couldn’t decide if this was a health angle safety thing or a paid passenger thing… but it’s a thing.
Marge told the people they had to get out and they kicked off that they had 3 dogs. Then all hell broke loose. Marge totally lost his cool and started shouting and yelling for the people to get out of his shuttle.
Then Marge launched into the van and was nose to nose with one of the dog owners screaming at him to get out. Which they eventually did. We got offered their places at this point and we duly took them up, after I got this shot… Marge came wanting to us “did you understand my English – 1 dog per trip and wait for next bus!!!”
All this time the woman shuttle driver was trying to stop the altercation and we presume calm Marge down. At one point Marge was shouting from the street into the van and a scooterist stopped to break up the altercation, we think.
Luckily for us, the woman drove us back to the campsite, and not Marge. The dog owners did get back, as we saw them later, but they were still demonstrating as our shuttle left.
One of our shuttle occupants said he’d had a run in with the dog owners the day before about parking somewhere they said he shouldn’t. So the dog owners had got form. Even so, Marge was out of order.
Here’s a few more pictures of Matera…
Tomorrow we think we’ll pack up and on our way to Paestum we’ll see if we can find a view point that looks back onto Matera.
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