Stratified Matera
One of the oldest cities in the world, Matera wears its rich past on its sleeve; the city is both an unforgettable travel destination, and a much needed reminder that there are far more hidden histories beneath the cities we visit than we may ever know.
Photo by Giulia Gasperini via Unsplash.
Picture this: a plunging canyon of white rock streaked with green overgrowth, archways to ancient caves dug into the face of the cliffs, and in the crook of the hillside, a bone-coloured city built on top of itself so many times that from a distance, its layers are clearly visible. On the grassy slopes not far downhill from a lookout point, a picnic of nuns spreads out to eat lunch amongst the yellow wildflowers, laughing like schoolgirls on the same terrain that once housed monastic caves dug into the cliffside. This is the view one encounters when driving through the hills of Basilicata towards Matera, a city that appears as old as the land itself.
Humans have carved a place for themselves into this rocky outcropping in southern Italy since Palaeolithic times, its long history only multiplying a visitor’s appreciation for the city’s age and layered beauty. The ancient Sassi district, now abandoned and eerily beautiful, seems to capture a moment of the past, freezing the dwellings of prehistoric Italians in time. In reality, the rock-cut caves were occupied until well into the twentieth century; between their prehistoric creation and their evacuation in the 1980s, they witnessed a parade of Greeks and Romans, Longobards and Byzantines, Saracens and Bourbons taking turns layering the city. Today, businesses such as Hotel Basiliani transform the vacant spaces, offering the unique chance of sleeping and dining in the ancient caverns amidst sweeping views of the cliffside, a truly unforgettable experience.
Photo by Luca Micheli via Unsplash.
Though remarkable, Matera’s famous reputation as ‘one of the oldest continually occupied settlements in the world’ is not the most unique thing about it. There are countless cities known for their ancient pasts, and many more that I’d guess have been occupied since prehistory, although we might never discover it.
It often seems like the world never stops changing and developing, but in truth, people tend to dwell in the same places, century after century. As we build up the present, what stood before becomes compressed into another buried layer of the past. Anything new lies on a foundation of something that existed before it: cities are built on the fabric of older settlements; our own person a patchwork of the genetic inheritances passed down to us by our parents and their parents and our ancestors before them; all we do and everything we know, learnt from the concepts and patterns created by generations before. This is the reality of most people and places, whether we’re aware of it or not; whether we are shown it or not.
What’s special about Matera is that it shows its hand, reminding us that there are hundreds of untold secrets beneath the places we think we know. It privileges its visitors by dropping a curtain, revealing more under the surface than we had ever imagined was there. If Matera didn’t wear its past on its sleeve, its story might never have been learned, and the experience it offers reduced to something one-dimensional. It would lose half its magic.
Photo by Federico Pierri, via Unsplash.
This is the sad reality for so many places that aren’t known for their history – when their pasts are not valued or famed, when we don’t take the initiative to learn as we build or travel. History isn’t the only element which makes a great city, but when the past is ignored every day by visitors, developers and inhabitants alike, we risk missing out on half the wonder that a place might have to offer.
What’s the purpose in dwelling on the past in a world that is moving forward? When we are looking to expand, improve, streamline and renovate, how are the phases of life a city or space has already passed through useful? The answer, I discovered while observing Matera’s innumerable layers, is that in an era where the shiny and new is often so prioritised, we keep returning like moths to a flame back to those places that expose to us little pieces of life before our time. Places like this are so charming because their histories are not so hidden. Matera’s landscape and the stratified city that sits within it are proof that when even a thin layer of the past is retained as it is built over, the final result possesses a quality that is both interesting and attractive. In other words, the past is profitable – culturally, as it stirs inspiration and further creation; academically, as we write more complete histories; economically and socially, as visitors continue to venture to places where the past is paid homage to. As the world as we know it continues to develop, I hope those responsible for the architecture of its future take note of this, so that the present can form the basis of whatever is to come rather than the rubble of a moment long gone.
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Photo by Federico Pierri, via Unsplash.