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Hello again, and welcome to the second installment of our Italian adventure. Today we will take you around the southern tip of Italy, right where the toe is and we will show you a whole bunch of things that you would
not normally see in the north. We will start by showing you the hotel we stayed at, or rather the pool. We must say that after our Sardegna trip in 2003 we were very spoiled and nothing will ever compare to it. This place was okay and the food was passable but we were really there to check out the region so it all worked out in the end.
Let's start by saying that most towns in the south seem to be build on hills, this is because they were frequently attacked by all manners of "baddies" including all the usual suspects. So by necessity you had to build your house somewhere where the "baddies" couldn't get you which results in some great pictures and a lot of car sickness driving to towns on top of mountains.
By far the most impressive place we saw was Matera, second largest city in Basilicata ... considered by many the poorest region in Italy although they have now apparently found oil ["Black gold! Texas Tea!"]. Matera has been around for a "few" hundred years. It started out as a cave settlement where the inhabitants inhabited caves in the cliffs (duh! that's why they call it a cave settlement) and then progressed to a large city built entirely into the side of a mountain. There were two types of homes, one which was dug entirely in a cave and the entrance was "surfaced" with a wall, a window and a door, and another type where the cave represented the "back room" and there were further rooms built out of the side of the mountain. It's kinda hard to explain so hopefully the pictures below will give you an idea.
Now to the really cool part. Inside some of these caves there are churches that were build pre-1000 AD. We visited a group of four chapels which mantained most of their rooms and some of their frescoes. Some of these chapels were later used as wine cellars by the locals. Luckily because the caves were not too deep and they had plenty of doors the moisture was not too bad so damage to the frescoes was not as bad as it could have been. Really something to see, hope the pictures below do it justice
Now, there had to be the "tourist trap" in this town and it showed up as an authentic, restored Matera home complete with life size donkey model. We had to check it out. It turns out that most houses were single room dwellings probably 30 feet by 20 feet with no sewer or running water facilities. They included a small kitchen, and a large bed for the parents. The children would sleep wherever they could. They did keep their animals with them in the house and this was the subject of much debate in Italy in the 1940s and in 1951 the government started moving people out into those charming 1950s "socialist cube" apartments that have plagued so many cities in Europe. But we digress, anyway the people were moved out and "the man" took over the houses. Some are now being restored into luxury apartments ... go figure.
There was a lot more of this trip, and we split it up into two. You can find the rest here. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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