Matera: Stone, Silence and the Feeling of Time
The first time I walked through the Sassi of Matera, I had the strange sensation that time was layered rather than passed. Stone over stone, cave over cave, centuries still visible in the walls and stairways. People have lived here continuously for more than two thousand years, untill the 60s, making Matera one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world — but what stays with me most is not the historical information. It is the atmosphere: the silence between the alleys, laundry moving in the wind, light touching the tuff stone at sunset… Life simply adapted, transformed and continued.
Hidden beneath the main square, Palombaro Lungo, this enormous underground cistern reveals a less visible side of Matera’s history. Descending into the cool darkness, surrounded by water and stone, it becomes easier to understand this.
Also in a shopping trip, I always stop in front of the Chiesa del Purgatorio. Its façade, both solemn and strangely, is impossible to ignore: memento mori… It is one of those places that tell you about a very intimate relationship with mystery, memory and faith.
And then there is Santa Maria de Idris, perched dramatically on a rocky outcrop above the Sasso Caveoso. Carved directly into the tuff stone, it almost seems to grow out of the landscape itself… it becomes difficult to distinguish where nature ends and human history begins.
Later that evening we had dinner at Tierra Osteria Contemporanea, where traditional Lucanian ingredients are interpreted with elegance and passion…. somehow the whole experience became complete.
