Matera, Basilicata Region, Italy

🇮🇹 Matera is a city in the region of Basilicata, in Southern Italy. As the capital of the province of Matera, its original settlement lies in two canyons carved by the Gravina River. This area, the Sassi di Matera, is a complex of cave dwellings carved into the ancient river canyon. Over the course of its history, Matera has been occupied by Greeks, Romans, Longobards, Byzantines, Saracens, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, and Bourbons. By the late 1800s, Matera's cave dwellings became noted for intractable poverty, poor sanitation, meager working conditions, and rampant disease. Evacuated in 1952, the population was relocated to modern housing, and the Sassi (Italian for "stones") lay abandoned until the 1980s. Renewed vision and investment led to the cave dwellings becoming a noted historic tourism destination, with hotels, small museums and restaurants – and a vibrant arts community.

Matera lies on the right bank of the Gravina river, whose canyon forms a geological boundary between the hill country of Basilicata (historic Lucania) to the south-west and the Murgia plateau of Apulia to the north-east. The city began as a complex of cave habitations excavated in the softer limestone on the gorge's western, Lucanian face. It took advantage of two streams which flow into the ravine from a spot near the Castello Tramontano, reducing the cliff's angle of drop and leaving a defensible narrow promontory in between. The central high ground, or acropolis, supporting the city's cathedral and administrative buildings, came to be known as Civita, and the settlement districts scaling down and burrowing into the sheer rock faces as the Sassi. Of the two streambeds, called the grabiglioni , the northern hosts Sasso Barisano (facing Bari) and the southern Sasso Caveoso (facing Montescaglioso). The Sassi consist of around twelve levels spanning the height of 380 m, connected by a network of paths, stairways, and courtyards (vicinati). The medieval city clinging on to the edge of the canyon for its defence is invisible from the western approach. The tripartite urban structure of Civita and the two Sassi, relatively isolated from each other, survived until the 16th century, when the centre of public life moved outside the walls to the Piazza Sedile in the open plain (the Piano) to the west, followed by the shift of the elite residences to the Piano from the 17th century onwards. By the end of the 18th century, a physical class boundary separated the overcrowded Sassi of the peasants from the new spatial order of their social superiors in the Piano, and geographical elevation came to coincide with status more overtly than before, to the point where the two communities no longer interacted socially. Yet it was only at the turn of the 20th century that the Sassi were declared unfit for modern habitation, and the government relocation of all their inhabitants to new housing in the Piano followed between 1952 and the 1970s. A new law in 1986 opened the path to restoration and reoccupation of the Sassi, this time – as noted by the architectural historian Anne Toxey – for the benefit of the wealthy middle class. The recognition of the Sassi, labelled la città sotterranea ("the underground city"), together with the rupestrian churches across the Gravina as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in December 1993 has assisted in attracting tourism and accelerated the reclaiming of the site. In 2019, Matera was declared a European Capital of Culture.

History Before its integration into the modern Italian state, the city of Matera had experienced the rule of the Romans, Lombards, Arabs, Byzantines, Swabians, Angevins, Aragonese, and Bourbons.

Though scholars continue to debate the date the dwellings were first occupied in Matera, and the continuity of their subsequent occupation, the area of what is now Matera is believed to have been settled since the Palaeolithic (10th millennium BC). This makes it potentially one of the oldest continually inhabited settlements in the world. Alternatively, it has been suggested by Anne Toxey that the area has been "occupied continuously for at least three millennia".

The town of Matera was founded by the Roman Lucius Caecilius Metellus in 251 BC who called it Matheola. In AD 664 Matera was conquered by the Lombards and became part of the Duchy of Benevento. In the 7th and 8th centuries the nearby grottos were colonised by both Benedictine and Basilian monastic institutions. After the Arab conquest of Bari in 840, Matera came under Islamic rule. Emancipated from the old Lombard jurisdiction of the gastald of Acerenza in the Principality of Salerno, the town gained regional prominence. In the spring of 867, it was burnt by the imperial troops of Louis II as the first key target in the emirate's conquest; the Chronicle of St Benedict of Monte Cassino calls it a particularly well-defended site. The Franks soon fell out with the Lombards and the Byzantines exploited the local need for protection from Arab raiding and internal Lombard divisions to retake Apulia, which became the theme of Longobardia in 891/2. Already by 887, Matera's local Lombard elite bore Byzantine titles, the monastery of San Vincenzo al Volturno had to conduct business before the Byzantine judge and town notables of Matera, and the Greeks of Matera made up the Byzantine garrison of Naples. The precarious Byzantine rule had to contend with the ambitions of Lombard towns and nobles against the background of frequent incursions from the neighbouring duchy of Capua-Benevento and from Arab Sicily. In 940 Matera was besieged, possibly with local assistance, by the Lombards. On 25 January 982 the army of Otto II camped before the walls of Matera on its way from Salerno to Taranto, ostensibly marching against the Arabs. In 994 Matera was temporarily captured by the Arabs after a four-month siege. The town continued to play a part in Byzantine governance: in June 1019 the chartoularios Stephanos of Matera assisted in the re-foundation of Troia. But civic unrest was also endemic and in 1040 the Byzantine judge Romanos was murdered at Matera by the local auxiliary troops during a wave of assaults on Byzantine officials that swept across the region. After the prominent Apulian rebels enlisted the support of the Normans and defeated the new katepano of Italy at Cannae in 1041, Matera fell within the scope of Norman incursions and struck a deal with the invaders. In retaliation for this, the next katepano Georgios Maniakes, dispatched to Italy with special powers in April 1042, carried out mass executions in Matera in June, only to launch a rebellion of his own in September. After his departure Matera elected William Iron Arm as its count (1042), but like other towns it remained in Byzantine hands despite the Norman advances – in 1054 died Sico, the protospatharios of Matera. The city was seized in April 1064 as an independent acquisition by Robert, Count of Montescaglioso, a seditious nephew of Robert Guiscard, who profited from the involvement of his uncle further south. After count Robert died in July 1080, Matera accepted the rule of his brother Geoffrey of Conversano. Geoffrey's son Alexander joined a revolt against Roger II in 1132, but he fled before the advance of the king to Byzantium and left his son Geoffrey in Matera, whose inhabitants gave the city away to avoid being massacred by the royal troops. Alexander later took part in the Byzantine invasion of Italy in 1156. Lombard aristocrats survived with a reduced status: around 1150, Guaimar (III) of Capaccio, a descendant of Lombard princes, held a sub-fief near Matera from the count of Montescaglioso. Meanwhile, after a period of association with the Byzantine metropolis of Otranto from 968, the episcopal see of Matera was reclaimed by the archbishopric of Acerenza. A new cathedral church of St Eustace was consecrated in May 1082.

After a short communal phase and a series of pestilences and earthquakes, the city became an Aragonese possession in the 15th century, and was given in fief to the barons of the Tramontano family. In 1514, however, the population rebelled against the oppression and killed Count Giovanni Carlo Tramontano. In the 17th century Matera was handed over to the Orsini and then became part of the Terra d'Otranto, in Apulia. Later it was capital of the province of Basilicata, a position it retained until 1806, when Joseph Bonaparte assigned it to Potenza.

In 1927, it became capital of the new province of Matera.

Main sights: The Sassi (ancient town) Matera has gained international fame for its ancient town, the "Sassi di Matera". The Sassi originated in a prehistoric troglodyte settlement, and these dwellings are thought to be among the first ever human settlements in what is now Italy. The Sassi are habitations dug into the calcareous rock itself, which is characteristic of Basilicata and Apulia. Many of them are really little more than small caverns, and in some parts of the Sassi a street lies on top of another group of dwellings. The ancient town grew up on one slope of the rocky ravine created by a river that is now a small stream, and this ravine is known locally as "la Gravina". In the 1950s, as part of a policy to clear the extreme poverty of the Sassi, the government of Italy used force to relocate most of the population of the Sassi to new public housing in the developing modern city.

Until the late 1980s the Sassi was still considered an area of poverty, since its dwellings were, and in most cases still are, uninhabitable and dangerous. The present local administration, however, has become more tourism-orientated, and it has promoted the regeneration of the Sassi as a picturesque tourist attraction with the aid of the Italian government, UNESCO, and Hollywood. Today there are many thriving businesses, pubs and hotels there, and the city is amongst the fastest growing in southern Italy.

Transport Matera is the terminal station of the Bari–Matera, a narrow gauge railroad managed by Ferrovie Appulo Lucane. The nearest airport is Bari Airport. Matera is connected to the A14 Bologna-Taranto motorway through the SS99 national road. It is also served by the SS407, SS665 and SS106 national road.

Bus connection to Italy's main cities is provided by private firms.

Sport • Football Club Matera • Olimpia Matera, a basketball team.