ROCK THE HOUSE

Meet your private driver at your accommodation and set off to enjoy a full-day tour of two of southern Italy’s best-loved towns.

Nothing you’ve ever seen before could quite match up to Matera. History, culture and nature merge here, in this truly spectacular cave town, almost entirely carved out of rock. Matera’s origins are lost in the mists of time. You may well be standing in one of the world’s most ancient human settlements that can claim to have been inhabited continuously since the Neolithic age. The myriad natural caves in tufa limestone attracted the city’s first dwellers around 7,000 years ago. Over the centuries settlers gradually burrowed deeper and extended these grottoes, thus forging an intricate maze of tunnels, cisterns and living spaces which were occupied until as recently as the mid-20th century.

The dismal poverty and underdevelopment of the area meant that by the end of World War II entire families were still living in these prehistoric caves alongside their livestock, ravaged by malaria, without the basic elements of sanitation, electricity or ventilation. In the 1950s the government stepped in to settle the problem of these unacceptable living conditions, then referred to as “the shame of Italy”. The ancient warren was evacuated and its 16,000 cave dwellers, mostly peasants and farmers, were relocated to modern housing projects nearby. Sixty years ago Matera was well known as a national embarrassment but today the city has regained dignity and is back in the limelight with a positive spin. Those very same caves, now recovered and converted into craft shops, boutique hotels, restaurants, bars and spas, were not only declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993 but also earned Matera its prestigious title as Europe’s 2019 Capital of Culture.

Your guide will be waiting at the meeting point ready to lead you on a tour of the city’s unique tangle of caves, through its labyrinth of narrow alleys, up and down steps, past stone courtyards, enabling you to experience Matera in all its cavernous allure. The city’s main attractions are the awe-inspiring Sassi, a multi-level cluster of 1,500 natural and man-made grottoes hewn out of the rock, creating a honeycomb on the flanks of a steep ravine and used as dwellings and churches. As your guide will explain, to fully understand how people used to live inside these caves, you should definitely take a peek inside a Casa Grotta, a tiny museum that recreates the setting of a typical cave dwelling. Furnished with period fittings and tools, these homes are faithful reconstructions of Sassi before they were abandoned in the 1950s and offer a fascinating, though rather disturbing glimpse into the struggles and deprivations faced by yesteryear’s peasant families. Entire households used to share one room with their chickens and mules, all members of the family slept on one bed, ate around one small table from the same plate and collected rain water in cisterns, since there was no running water and no toilet.

However, the most striking feature of Matera is its rupestrian holy retreats. Some 150 churches, hermitages and sanctuaries, built into the rugged hillsides, attest to Matera’s role as the favourite refuge of Benedictine and Byzantine monastic communities in the Middle Ages. With their architectural virtuosity and remarkable wall paintings, these Christian temples are also evidence of the cultural fervour that animated Matera and the extraordinary artistic heights achieved by local craftsmen between the 8th and 14th centuries. You will have time to visit one of the following three churches: San Pietro Barisano, Matera’s largest rupestrian church, Santa Lucia alle Malve with its 13th century mural paintings and Santa Maria de Idris, in its unique location, perched atop the rocky spur of Monterrone.

Your guide will enrich your tour with intriguing anecdotes and riveting stories about past and present Matera, providing a stirring overview of human history from the very earliest settlers to the cave dwellers of modern times.

After lunch a 1-hour drive will bring you to the picture-postcard town of Alberobello, world-famous for its traditional trulli houses. Here your guide will explain how an ingeniously devised tax fraud curiously led to the creation of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Trulli are white-washed dwellings consisting of thick dry-stone walls assembled without mortar and topped by conical stone roofs. Bizarre as it may seem, these houses were originally designed in the late 15th century with the aim of fooling royal authorities and avoiding taxation, a successful trick that worked right up till 1797 when Alberobello acquired its status as a proper town. Indeed, until then, the local feudal lords, the shrewd Counts of Acquaviva, obliged their subjects to live inside trulli which could be quickly and easily dismantled. Taxation applied only to populated settlements and Alberobello could be transformed in no time into a vast expanse of rubble if the royal officers decided to inspect. Today these structures are still inhabited and constitute “an outstanding example of human settlement that retains its original form to a remarkable extent” as stated by the UNESCO committee. They also live on as a reminder of characteristic Italian artfulness. Enjoy a leisurely stroll along the town’s winding alleys lined with shops selling hand-painted ceramic artefacts, gastronomic specialities and all sorts of trulli-shaped souvenirs, before returning to your accommodation.