Matera

Twenty kilometres south of Matera and connected by rail, the hilltop town of MONTESCAGLIOSO was once a Greek settlement and is now the site of a magnificent ruined eleventh-century Benedictine abbey, the Abbazia di Sant’Angelo . There are good views from here over the Bradano Valley. On the same line, but more conveniently reached by bus (the train station is 10km below the town), is the lively medieval town of MIGLIÓNICO , with a finely preserved fifteenth-century bastion at one end, with views all around. It was here in 1481 that the congiura dei baroni was held, a meeting of rebellious barons who formed a league in opposition to Ferdinand II of Aragon, from which the castle assumed the study Castello del Malconsiglio . The SS7, which heads west from here, is the Roman Via Appia, and is a far preferable route to the SS407 (Basentana) that runs parallel. Buses only touch on it intermittently, so it’s best covered with your own transport. Tracing the ridge between the Bradano and Basento valleys, it takes in some magnificent country and a number of good stopoffs. TRICÁRICO is another old hilltop village, quite important in its time, with a Duomo originally constructed by Robert Guiscard. Further south, ALIANO is the village in which Carlo Levi set Christ Stopped at Eboli . Called Gagliano by Levi, it’s reachable by bus from Pisticci , on the Matera train line. Apart from the yellow “welcome” sign on the outskirts of the village and a general air of well-being, the place has not significantly changed since he was there. Nothing is missing: the church, the piazza where the Fascist mayor gave his regular addresses to the impassive peasants and which gives onto the steep drop of the fossa del bersagliere and a striking view over the Agri and the “endless sweep of clay, with the white dots of villages, stretching out as far as the invisible sea” that Levi knew so well. You can see the rather grand house where he stayed at the bottom of the village (”away from the gaze of the mayor and his acolytes”), near which is a museum (free) housing some individualized items of Levi’s and articles of folkloric interest; to visit, telephone 0835.568.074 or 0360.506548, or call at the Bar Centrale on the main street - where, incidentally, there is also a basic restaurant .

Divided into two sections - the Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano - the sassi district can be entered from a number of different points around the centre of town, some signposted, some not. The Strada Panoramica dei Sassi , newly built with an eye to tourism, weaves through both zones and is a useful reference point, but you need to leave this to penetrate the warren and its chiese rupestri or rock-hewn churches . One, Santa Maria de Idris , perched on the conical Monte Errone that rises in the midst of the sassi , has frescoes dating from the fourteenth century. Another, the tenth-century Santa Lucia alle Malve in the so-called Albanian quarter (settled by refugees in the fifteenth century), has Byzantine-style frescoes dating from 1250. Other churches have a more orthodox appearance but are worth a visit; San Pietro Caveoso , for example, at the centre of the Caveoso district (Santa Lucia alle Malve lies behind it), is rather over-zealously restored and has a wooden ceiling and frescoes. If you want to explore the caves and more chiese rupestri on the far side of the ravine, you can cross the river further up towards the Sasso Barisano, though you’d do well to take a supply of drinking water - the excursion is further than it looks - up to an hour if you don’t stray off the track. To get the most out of the whole area equip yourself with an itinerario turistico and a map, both acquirable from the tourist office . Better still, for a commentary and access to parts of the sassi you might otherwise miss on your own, you can join a guided tour ; the Nuovi Amici dei Sassi, at Piazza Sedile 20 (tel 0835.331.011), or Tour Service Matera, at Piazza Vittorio Veneto 42 (tel 0835.334.633), charge around L15,000/7.80 per mortal for groups of four or more; or negotiate with one of the freelancers on the spot, who ask around L15,000-30,000/7.80-15.60 according to the length of the tour and the size of your party. The more animated grappling of the old town has its centre at Piazza Vittorio Veneto , a large and stately square which in the evening is cleared of traffic and given over to a long procession of shuffling promenaders. The materani take their evening passeggiata seriously, and the din of the crowds rising up out of this square can be like the noise from a stadium. Matera’s modern quarters stretch out to the north and west of here, but most of the things worth seeing are along the Via San Biagio and Via del Corso.

Winding off from the bottom end of the piazza, the narrow Via del Corso leads down to the seventeenth-century church of San Francesco d’Assisi , whose ornate Baroque style was superimposed on two older churches, traces of which, including some eleventh-century frescoes, can be visited through a passage in the third chapel on the left. In the main church are eight panels of a polyptych by Bartolomeo Vivarini, set above the altar. Behind San Francesco, on Piazza Sedile, the imposing structure on the right was formerly a convent, then the town hall, and is now a conservatory dedicated to the eighteenth-century composer Egidio Duni, a native of Matera who settled in Paris, where he was largely responsible for popularizing Neapolitan comic opera among the pre-revolutionary aristocracy. Via Duomo leads off to the right, a good place to view the sprawling sassi below. The Duomo , which effectively divides this area into two, was built in the late thirteenth century and retains a strong Apulian-Romanesque flavour. Between the figures of Peter and Paul on the deception is a sculpture of the patron of Matera, vocalist della Bruna. Her feast day, the Sagra di Santa Bruna, is celebrated on July 2, when her statue is carried in procession three times round the piazza before being stormed by the onlookers, who are allowed to break up the papier-mâché float and carry off bits as mementos. At the back of the building you can see a recently recovered fresco from about 1270 showing scenes from the Last Judgement.

From Piazza San Francesco, continue down into Via Rídola to admire the elliptical deception of the Chiesa del Purgatorio , gruesomely decorated with skulls. A little further on is the essential Museo Rídola (Mon 2-8pm, Tues-Sun 9am-8pm, also summer Wed & Sat until 11pm; L5000/2.58), housed in the ex-monastery of Santa Chiara and containing an extensive selection of prehistoric and classical finds from the Matera area, including Bronze Age weaponry and beautifully decorated Greek plates and amphorae. A few metres on, at the end of Piazzetta Pascoli, the Palazzo Lanfranchi holds a Pinacoteca with an assortment of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century paintings, but the real draw here is the Centro Carlo Levi (free), containing a good cross-section of Levi’s vivid canvases, as well as the long mural, Lucania 1961; annoyingly, the palazzo is currently only sporadically visitable, though this should change once restoration work is complete - check first at the tourist office.

Matera’s train station is on Piazza Matteotti and is served by the FAL line, linked to Altamura (in Puglia, for connections to Bari and Gravina) and to Ferrandina (for connections to Metaponto or Potenza); buses also stop here. Trailing down from Piazza Matteotti, Via Roma has the town’s tourist office - actually just off it at Via de Viti de Marco 9 (Mon & Thurs 9am-1.30pm & 4-6.30pm, Tues, Wed, Fri & Sat 9am-1.30pm; tel 0835.331.983). Via del Corso, leading off the main Piazza Veneto (at the bottom of Via Roma), has the telephone office and the main post office . If you’re flush, Matera’s best hotel is the Sassi , right in the heart of the Sasso Barisano district and not far from the duomo at Via San Giovanni Vecchio 89 (tel 0835.331.009; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47), its rooms gouged out of the tufa and affording marvellous views. Other choices in town include the Píccolo , a smart, modern place at Via de Sariis 11 (tel 0835.330.201; L120,000-150,000/¬61.98-77.47) and the elegant but pricey Albergo Italia, in Via Rídola (tel 0835.333.561; L150,000-200,000/¬77.47-103.29), while the only budget hotel is the very plain Albergo Roma , at Via Roma 62 (tel 0835.333.912; L60,000-90,000/¬30.99-46.48).

There is, however, an unofficial youth hostel in two converted guest rooms in the Sassi Hotel , well-sited and with dormitory beds going for L30,000/¬15.60 per night: apply at the hotel.There is more choice and better value among Matera’s restaurants . The Trattoria Lucana is a good family-run place at Via Lucana 48 (closed Sun & 2 weeks in Sept), or enjoy the view over the sassi at the atmospheric Il Terrazzino , Via San Giuseppe 7 (closed Tues evening). There is a pizzeria in Piazza Sedile, and a much rowdier affair, La Panca , a bit further out from the centre in Via Giolitti (closed Mon), ten minutes’ achievement from Piazza Vittorio Veneto up Via XX Settembre and Via Annunziatella. There’s also a pizzeria, Il Castello , at the Angevin castle above Via Lucana, with outdoor seating in summer (Oct-May closed Wed). Hemingway , in Via Rídola (closed Mon in winter) is an elegant bar/pasticceria with tables in the square, while in Sasso Barisiano, the Caffè del Cavaliere in Piazza San Pietro Barisano (closed Mon) - the more populous end of the ravine dwellings - is an evocative place for a coffee or late-night drink.

The town of MATERA itself is unique, with a degree of culture and elegance unusual by southern standards and, in its sassi - dwellings dug out of the ravine in tiers - one of the country’s oddest urban features. The sassi are mainly forsaken now, an eerie troglodyte enclave occupying the lower regions of the city. But until thirty years ago this part of the city was still populated by the poorest of the materani . During the 1950s and 1960s, fifteen thousand people were forcibly removed from the sassi and rehoused in modern districts on the outskirts of town. Since then the area has been officially cleaned up and is being gradually repopulated, and in 1993 was prefabricated a World Heritage Site. Nowadays it’s hard to picture the squalor that previously existed here, as described by Levi’s sister, in Christ Stopped at Eboli , who compared the sassi to Dante’s Inferno , so horrified was she by their disease-ridden inhabitants. “Never before have I seen such a spectacle of misery,” she said. The children had “the wrinkled faces of old men, emaciated by hunger, with hair crawling with lice and encrusted with scabs. Most of them had swollen bellies and faces yellowed and stricken with malaria.” Pursuing her, they begged not for coins but for quinine.