Intriguing houses: Matera and Alberobello
The bus trip across to Salerno was again full of great sea and mountain views and much horn honking on these very narrow roads.
We were on time to pick up our AVIS rental, a Fiat 500X manual, with a boot big enough to keep our bags out of sight. The Avis man,
recommended the full cover insurance, which blows out the rental cost quite a
bit, but given the narrow roads and Italian drivers it’s a bit of peace
of mind. We drove to Matera for our one night stay, the roads had a lot
of GUR places, and we ducked from one side of the four lane highway to the other to accommodate the frequent works.
No road cones here, just little flaps probably nailed onto the road surface to
guide us out of the works areas. I was reasonably speed limit compliant, even to the extent of having
a large tourist bus sitting in my boot flashing lights at me at one stage when we were
travelling through the road works. Limit was 40 km/hr, I was doing 60 km/hr but
the bus wanted me to be doing more. I didn’t!! Perhaps there was a local rule
that if there are no workmen at work, you can ignore the speed signs?
Matera
Matera was 195 km, about 2 and a half hours, mostly
along the Estrada 847, a four lane often separated highway, with lots of
tunnels on the hilly bits. OUR lunch stop at a roadside service area was not a
great experience, but we weren’t keen to haul off into one of the hilltop towns
and to try and find somewhere to park, then somewhere to eat. The il crudo
baguette was just that, bread roll and prosciutto.
We arrived in Matera in good shape and good time. Parking is a bit of a nightmare in these small towns but our accommodation host had provided us with several options nearby. We found a good spot just a few metres walk away from home with 24 hour parking which suited our needs well.
Four lots of locked doors to negotiate for our apartment,
but a well setup spot for our an overnight stay. We did our usual orientation walk
around the town to take in the views, and visited Casa Noha, a house which explores the history of the Sassi. Fortunately we took our umbrellas for the outing,
as the skies opened up, with a thunder, lightning and heavy rain performance.
The water was cascading down the cobbled streets where all the rain runoff
ends up.
We are here to do a guided walk tomorrow to learn about the history of this town and its cave dwellers, which ended quite recently in the 1970s. The Casa Noha visit showed video presentations of the lives and hardships of the Sassi, in good preperation for tomorrow.
We found a place serving local fare which opened early enough
for us. My pasta with ricotta and spinach was great, not so sure about Ann’s turnip orecchiette
pasta (it sounds better in the Italian version and was local fare: Orechiette
Cime di Rapa) but then we followed with pork bombettes: pork mince wrapped in bacon, a local speciality and delicious!
Our Matera guided walk with Gaetano was a small group of four and was excellent value. The caves in the two valleys are entirely man made; one area, Sassi Caveosa, was inhabited by shepherds and the poor, and the other, Sassi Barisano, in the foreground of the photo, by the wealthier middle and upper class.
All were carved into the soft sandstone by hand tools. Neolithic people came to live here around 3000 years ago. These were mainly farmers and shepherds. The area was forested, had great water supply from the river, which was a much larger body of water than it is today.
In the Sassi Caveosa people lived in one room caves, generally in small communities of 3-6 families gathered around a small neighbourhood piazza where the dwellers spent most of their time to escape the constrained atmosphere of the cave. The caves also provided a home for the animals. So Mama and Papa and the children, and the pigs, sheep, goats and the donkey, all lived and slept in one room. The animal dung was also retained in the cave, and as it dried out it could be used for fuel.
The community trapped and stored rain water and channels were cut in the rock to direct any overflow into lower down cisterns. People did extend sometimes, adding a room out the front of the cave to cope with an increasing family. Cesspots were emptied over the bank, generally into the stream below, or when caves became closer and closer, paved streets were built with a slope veed towards a central channel. The rain then occasionally washed things down. It sounds absolutely horrific and the Sassi and its people became Italy’s shame.
After WWII it became a political issue, so over the next 30
years people were forcibly moved out of the Sassi Caveosa area into new housing about 3
km away. The people moved were those who were living with animals, while the Barisano dwellers were able to stay.
They were provided with brand new free homes, but weren’t initially very happy as they had lost their neighbourhood and its community. However the living conditions were obviously very much better. Infant mortality was 47% in the Sassi Caveosa, malaria was rife and also cholera. By about 1970 those who hadn’t been forcibly removed did move out as they became wealthier.
This is now a UNESCO heritage area, because of the system of water structures in place, and is mainly owned by the Government and is being developed into hotels and other commercial activity such as small shops in the original caves.
People wishing to establish accommodation or restaurant facilities can get a 25 or 99 year lease. As a heritage area, it must retain the look and facades of all the old buildings. Restoration takes some time.
As
part of the tour we saw the neighbourhood water management cisterns and drains
but also went down into the 3000 yr old Palombaro Longo which was a huge cistern where
water was stored throughout the year to cover the dry summer months. It
operated until the 1920s when reticulation provided a better quality of water.
The Barisano was less excavated and had more expansive buildings.
Interestingly Matera has been the site for many movies, and it was this exposure that has helped in remediation drives. Notably No Time to Die and Mel Gibson's The Passion of Christ were filmed in Matera.
After the tour and a coffee in the piazza, we went to find the little Fiat, still safely parked on the street and set the GPS for next stop.
Alberobello
Not many km away, on another little hilltop, this town has
the largest concentration of trullis in the area. These are small round
shelters built of stone walls and stone roofs. People built them originally to
live in, to provide shelter for livestock and for general storage. Because they
weren’t “permanent buildings” and could be quickly dismantled and moved, they
weren’t subject to the tax payable to the King of Naples. The world hasn’t
changed much over time in many ways, with people constantly searching for ways
to get around paying tax!
The centre of the old town has an area, now with UNESCO heritage status, that preserves these little buildings for all time. They are now used for shops, churches, homes and many B&Bs. There is also a more modern town with conventional buildings, but the stone roof appears in many more building types in the town.
Our accommodation here is very good, spacious, well
appointed, and well set to accommodate us for a few days. The tiled floors
throughout are very smart, and our deck with a view over the older part of the
city was great for evening drinkies, although we couldn’t find a place that
could restock our supplies of Amalfi coast’s RTD G&T’s. Ann’s drink is now
Aperol Spritz, which may not survive past Alberobello!
Many of the houses have quite large backyards, all with the stone boundary fences, no grass, plenty of fruit trees (figs, apricots, plums, walnuts, guavas). The land underneath is all kept tilled, and there are some very good veggie gardens in evidence.
We did an Alberobello town walk when we arrived and came home via the supermercato. This is a very tidy, touristy town with many trullis and the whole village centre made up of these buildings.
The plan was to use Alberobello as a base for day trips and to explore it early in the morning or after the hordes of tourists left later in the day. For our first day trip we visited Cisternino to seek out a braceria lunch. This is a grill-based restaurant where you can select your meats and then have them cooked and presented to you at your table. The place we selected to do this had changed its hours and was doing only dinner so we found a nearby café that did a braceria meal. The pictures tell the story and we had a very nice lunch.
The walk around town showed us a mix of locals and tourists, with the locals sitting on a bench in a piazza, having a bit of communal time.
The town lookout point did indeed show the extent of the Itria valley that we’re currently staying in.
Cisternino is acclaimed as one of Italy's prettiest towns and cerainly lived up to that reputation, with beautiful flower-bedecked golden sandstone buildings.
After our lunch we heeded to Locorotondo, about 20 km away where we had lined up a tasting of the valley’s wines.
The tasting was two reds and two whites. The whites were Bianco Locorotondo DOP, a blend of three white varieties (Verdeca, Minutolo and Bianci D’Alessano) which was very nice, quite dry and flinty. This was followed by Minutolo, the aromatic grape of the Itria Valley, this one had a touch of Turkish Delight for me.
The reds were Negromaro, quite Pinot Noirish, dry, slight pepper and some chocolate and cherry in the aftertaste. The Susumaniello was dry, fruity and plummy to the taste. This was a lovely relaxed wine tasting experience at a small wine bar. A nice way to spend an hour or so on a hot afternoon, as the picture shows!!
Our next day’s trip out to the coast to visit Monopoli took us through lots of well-tended olive groves. The area under the trees is generally kept slightly cultivated, some of the trees look centuries old, but it certainly a huge industry in the area.
And alongside the stone walls of the roads were Ann's favourites: poppies.
Monopoli is an old port with an adjacent walled town.
We strolled
around the harbour, the old fort and into the town. There is a very small
beach, not much tidal range in these parts, about 200mm difference between high
tide and low tide, pretty easy to manage really , and pretty good if you want a
swim any time of the day or night.
We had lunch in Largo Palmieri after a quick look at the ukelele convention being held in the hall next to the restaurant. The
restaurant, had a great wine cellar, which you could peer down into while paying
the bill. They make very good use of the rock substrate in this part of the
world.
Lunch was fried fish, squid and octopus for me, accompanied by the fried zucchini. Ann’s crumbed turbot was undoubtedly healthier.
We were back in Alberobello early enough to do another town walk, this time with the tourists, and with the shops open, giving us a slightly different perspective to our previous early morning amble.
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