Matera - the city of the Sassi

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Trip Start Jan 25, 2007 Previous
Entry Trip End Jun 30, 2007 Next
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  Matera, Basilicate, Italy
Friday, May 18, 2007

Ciao amici
Well, as you know my father is with me. I have to deliver him to Matera, where his oldest sister lives with her family - my cousin Nino, his wife Elisa, and their sons Gianluca and Andrea. Gianluca and his girlfriend, Manuela, spent 2 months with us in Melbourne last year and another 4 months in Sydney and other places, and only returned to Italy in March this year. Gianluca will take Dad over from me and organise for him to go to Ferrara, where he will be picked up by another cousin - sounds like 'pass the parcel', doesn't it?
My father's other surviving sister, zia Ciccina, comes with us, so up we drive up through the long foot of Calabria until we reach the turn off for Sibari, which will take us across to the Ionian sea. Pink and white oleander is in flower the length of the freeway and it's sunny and beautiful. The ancient Greek town of Sybaris was a byword for luxury and hedonism (as in a sybaritic lifestyle). We follow the coast for 50kms to Metaponto, then turn inland for the final stretch to Matera, up on it's hill.
My aunt lives in an apartment on the heights above the Sassi, the ancient town area where houses, churches, etc were built into the soft, creamy rock (tufa), on the edge of a gorge. When I first visited in the 1970's the local council was forcing people from their homes into flats in the new town above. Now the Sassi are on the World Heritage List as 'the most outstanding, intact example of a troglodyte settlement in the Mediterranean region, perfectly adapted to its terrain and ecosystem ...

01 Making waves

dating from the Paleolithic', according to the UNESCO site. A number of films have been filmed using the Sassi as ancient Jerusalem, including, I believe, the Passion of the Christ by Mel Gibson.
People are moving back in and many hotels, restaurants and bars have opened up. Why do the authorities always want to move people out from where they have always lived (even if somewhat rundown), to the new soulless places - I remember a gorgeous little crescent behind where I lived in North Fitzroy (now also a trendy area), that was cleared in the 1970's and now consists of brown brick flats.
After the 8 hour journey I have a shower, get changed and am taken by Gianluca and Manuela, and 3 of their friends to the Lucaneria restaurant on the edge of the Sassi. What a meal - we order the antipasto of 'prodotti tipici' (typical local products), and here's what comes - goat's milk ricotta with a strawberry sauce, diced wild boar with almonds, sausage with wild fennel, whole fried crisp red peppers (it feels like eating crisp, tasty paper), vitello (veal) con rucola selvaggia (wild rocket)and pine nuts, cooked chicory and broad bean puree, farro (an ancient grain) and orzo (barley) risotto with white squash. This is followed up with Filicelli (a thick hand-rolled pasta) with 2 different sauces - local white truffles and porcini mushrooms, and tomato, cacioricotta cheese, and fried breadcrumbs. After all this food, 4 bottles of Aglianico del Vulture red wine (a big red wine from a region north of here), and a couple of grappas each (as a digestive), they take me for a couple of cleansing ales (as we say in Australia) to a pub in the Sassi.

02 Across the glistening sea

This is my first night, mind you.

The next day I wander around in the extremely bright sunlight and high heat in the Sassi, have a big lunch at the house of my cousin Nino with all the family, and upon saying I am full and can't eat any more am ordered to drink extra servings of Padre Peppè, a local digestive liqueur made from walnuts. I am happy to do what I'm told, then have a siesta, and in the evening we're off to the Sassi for a wine bar crawl - I shouldn't be telling you all this as you will all think I'm louche (work that one out for yourselves), but you might as well know what I'm really like, warts and all.
One of the bars we go to is the Spirito Divino - the name means Divine Spirit but it's a play on words as it can also be read as the Spirit of the Wine - di vino, get it? We are still digesting today's and last night's meal so we only have a mixed platter of local salumi (cured meats) and cheese, bruschetta, and a plate of mixed grilled meat which we eat with our fingers - oh, and of course a couple of bottles of Aglianico del Vulture, and a cleansing ale ... I think you get the picture.
My aunts are a bit miffed with me because I'm going out all the time with my young cousin and his friends and they're not getting a chance to fatten me up (doesn't he look a bit thin they say to each other), so I allow them to make me a couple of meals (which is no hardship at all except my stomach feels full all the time).
I extricate myself from this unseemly competition to feed me by going off for 3 days to tour the Salento peninsula - the stilletto heel of Italy (which is a very beautiful area and will be my next entry).

03 Dinner at the Lucaneria first night

When I get back they talk me into staying longer because it will be my birthday in a couple of days time (18th May, so there's no excuse for you all not to send me belated birthday greetings for those who didn't know, AND those who did know but forgot), and it would break their hearts for me not to have it with them, and other emotional family blackmail, etc, so I stay on, feeling like an object which they want to put food into :).
Then Manuelas's parents get in on the act - they've heard that I like to sample local produce and am an adventurous eater, so they take me out (with Gianluca and Manuela) to a typical macelleria - rosticceria (butcher/roastery) in a nearby town called Laterza.
These are unique to this area and started out as butcher shops which built a wood-fired oven in the corner - customers could either buy meat to take home, or ask for it to be roasted, and they would eat it served in paper (just like fish and chips), standing up, on the spot.
People would often bring their own bread and wine and make a meal of it, and it became so popular that a number of these establishments added a room to their shop and turned them into rustic restaurants, and it is one of these I'm taken to tonight.
We sit down and immediately bread, olives and red wine (the holy trinity?) in a rustic clay jug are brought, and a plate of marinated vegetables. Then the parade of meat starts (and I don't think an Argentinian would have been disappointed)- salumi, little U-shaped sausages, a plate of carpaccio (raw marinated meat), several plates in succession of various roasted meats, and a specialty of the area, grilled little balls of chopped heart, liver and other unmentionables wrapped in intestine.

04 Gianluca Manuela and friends

There is a large table of Materani (as people from Matera are called) behind us being hosted by a candidate for the local council. They are noisy and in good cheer, and when they hear I'm from Australia, they keep sending over tidbits from their table and suggesting I try this and that. Then the piece de resistance is brought - I will now warn vegetarians and the squeamish to skip this bit - a sheep's head is brought in, cut down the centre. I proceed to eat my share - brains, tongue, cheek, etc until only bones, teeth, and the eye is left. I have all these people watching as I fiddle around trying to get the eye out until one of the men mimes how to do it and I follow his instructions and just stick my index finger in the socket and pull the eye out and pop it quickly in my mouth. It's rather squelchy, but tastes quite ok.
OK vegetarians, you can start reading again. I do apologise to my vegetarian readers for what you might consider my gratuious carnivorous food pornography, but as we say in Australia 'someone's got to do it'.
Finally we get a large plate of cleansing raw vegetables - cucumber, fennel celery and carrot.
After this the would-be councillor invites us all to a bar for a gelato and a drink, and we share a lemon gelato and drink a beautifully smooth local grappa made from Greco di Tufo grapes (to aid our digestion).
I consider the difference between cultures - can you imagine a candidate for local council elections in Australia inviting friends and potential voters to a rustic restaurant and plying them with food and wine until they can hardly move? I guess you can consider it as corruption, but in another way it is simply an extension of natural hospitality - often when I have been introduced to a friend or relative of a cousin they have invited me for a coffee or icecream or a meal with them.

05 Handrolled pasta with porcini and whitetruffle

The last night is my birthday and there's no way I'm going to be allowed not to have it with my family so we head over to my aunt's and our noses are wonderfully assaulted by the aroma of freshly made pizzas - simple traditional tomato and young mozarella, and faccia vecchia (old face) - just a good pizza base with a little oil, salt and herbs, that is all wrinkled and splotchy, hence the name. The faccia vecchia disappears like a shot -we all prefer this to the other one with more topping. Elisa has brought a birthday cake for me - a sponge base doused in liqueurs, with vanilla and chocolate creme patisserie layers above and cream on top, and the birthday song is sung and they toast me with Spimante, and then I'm allowed to go out with my cousin again, as it's after 10 by now. Back to the Spirito Divino we go, and watch some northern Argentinian folkloric dancing by 2 young couples, then they come back half an hour later and do a set of tangos (they're hoping to open up a tango school here), and finally we go home about 3am, walking through the Sassi.
Next morning I'm up early, say goodbye to everybody (Dad sheds a little tear), and take my zia Ciccina back with me to Sicily (all the time quietly suggesting that I slow down).

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06 La Lucaneria	07 In the piazza at night	08 View of Sassi at night	09 Another view of Sassi
10 A bit of baroque	11 Town hall and library	12 Palace of the government	13 Down into the Sassi we go
14 Bar in the Sassi	15 Another little room in the pub	16 One of the older parts of the Sassi	17 Shoes and partners
18 Breakfast in Matera	19 Riding through the streets on Sunday morn	20 Old gentlemen taking the sun	21 What's going on down there
22 Getting ready for the procession to church	23 Sassi by day	24 Living on top of each other	25 On top of each other 2
26 Matera cathedral	27 Light from heaven	28 Old Roman ruins under the main piazza	29 An Australian car sunshield in the Sassi
30 Typical view in the Sassi	31Gorge along which Matera is built	32 Paleolithic caves	33 Churches among the rocks
34 Houses in the rock	35 More houses in the rock	36 Cute house	37 Old part of the Sassi
38 Path on roof below	39 Church built into rock	40 Gianluca and me	41 Wine bar with indoor mini golf
42 View down into the wine bar	43 Groovy room in wine bar	44 Group photo	45 Mini golf
46 Stone decoration	47 Spirito Divino wine bar	48 Walking home from Spirito Divino	49 Macelleria Rosticceria Perrone
50 Sheep's head	51 Eating the head	52 Dark clouds	53 Family shot at my birthday party
54 Cutting the cake	55 Argentine folkloric dance at Spirito Divino	56 Spinning	57 Tango in Matera
58 Last night at Spirito Divino	59 Walking home I see a church	60 Figures in the dark	61 Maze in the Sassi
62 Goodbye Dad

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