THE EVICTION FROM THE SASSI OF MATERA…..FROM ITALY’S SHAME TO A WORLD HERITAGE SITE

For travelers visiting the Sassi di Matera for the first time, it is hard to imagine that Matera’s history includes a terrible period that led it to be called Italy’s shame. There was a time when Matera was completely isolated from the rest of the world, a period that deeply marked it and outlined its slow and excessively late development.

The Sassi di Matera were described by Carlo Levi’s sister as the “infernal crater,” due to the miserable peasant life, but upon his arrival, he described it with these words: “In the caves of the Sassi hides the capital of the peasants, the hidden heart of their ancient civilization. Anyone who sees the Sassi di Matera cannot help but be struck by its expressive and touching mournful beauty.”

Carlo Levi’s denouncement brought the Sassi di Matera to national attention. Italian politics began to take an interest in the issue, with the leader of the Italian Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, being the first to arrive in the capital of Basilicata in 1948 to see with his own eyes the unhealthy environments in which the inhabitants were forced to live alongside animals. Without mincing words, he called the Sassi a “National disgrace,” an evil to be eradicated with brute force to restore dignity to the people. Other intellectuals also took an interest in the matter, including Tommaso Fiore, Francesco Compagna, Manlio Rossi, and the American sociologist George Peck.

In July 1950, Prime Minister Alcide De Gasperi visited the Sassi di Matera, and in the following months, he tasked the minister from Lucania, Emilio Colombo, to study a bill to facilitate the reclamation and resolution of the Sassi problem. On May 17, 1952, the Italian State, by the hand of De Gasperi and on the suggestion of Minister Colombo, with the “Special Law for the Eviction from the Sassi di Matera” forced two-thirds of the city’s inhabitants, about seventeen thousand people, to leave their homes to move to new districts: “The State assumes the expense for the reclamation of the Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano districts of the town of Matera and for the construction of social housing particularly suitable for farmers, workers, and craftsmen, in replacement of those currently existing in said districts which will be declared uninhabitable and demolished.”

The Sassi were practically emptied, becoming a ghost town on the edge of the new city. The inhabitants obtained new houses and the promise of a plot of land to cultivate, paying nominal rent in exchange for the transfer of their old homes to the state. Decay and abandonment took the place of life in the caves and churches, while the city expanded on the plain in new districts according to the Master Plan.

The great push that accelerated the process of reclamation and rehabilitation of the old part of Matera was given by UNESCO in 1993.

On December 9th in Cartagena, the Sassi were declared a World Heritage Site, the sixth Italian site to be part of this special list, the first in Southern Italy, the first site to be defined as a “Cultural Landscape.” This result was also achieved thanks to the commitment of the architect and urban planner Pietro Laureano.

In 2008, the city of the Sassi, thanks to the Matera 2019 Committee, embarked on the path to candidacy for European Capital of Culture in 2019. Matera, representing the entire Basilicata Region, first became part of the shortlist, the 6 finalists, together with Cagliari, Lecce, Perugia-Assisi, Siena, and Ravenna, and later on October 17, 2014, with 7 out of 13 preferences, was designated European Capital of Culture for 2019. The occasion could represent the redemption of the people who lived in the Sassi but above all becomes a matter of pride for us Materans in thinking that the sacrifices of those people have become the TRUE story of our city, the ancient city of MATERA.

THE BREAD OF MATERA: ITS HISTORY

The history of the “Pane di Matera” presumably begins in the Kingdom of Naples period, when cereal production was the prevailing activity in the territory of the Sassi di Matera. Supporting this thesis, we find some local handicraft elements related to bread production: the “stamps.” These were used to mark the loaves before they were baked in communal ovens, so as to distinguish them once baked. The stamps were nothing more than wooden statuettes on which the initials of the head of the family were carved at the base; the statuettes had very diverse shapes, mainly taking on human or animal forms. Today, they represent fantastic collectible items, reproduced by some local artists.

We can find numerous historical testimonies that allow us to document the passion and cult of the Matera population towards this product. First of all, there is the great ability to conserve the cereals grown between the city of the Sassi di Matera and the neighboring towns. On this topic, we cite the testimony of Gianfranco De Blasiis written in the year 1635 in the “Chronology of the City of Matera” and today preserved by the State Archive of Matera: “About the preservation of grains and their perfection, it is enough to say that they are preserved for up to ten, twelve, and fifteen years, as if they were in a chest, and for these grain preserves there is a tradition that this City was the granary of the Roman people.”

From 1857, there were four “masters of centimoli”, that is, four mills in Matera. In every peasant house, there was always a mortar carved into the stone used for the family milling of grain. Initially, each family, or groups of families, owned a private oven, later public ovens were born where homemade bread was baked. Each oven was carved into the rock and hermetically sealed. In subsequent centuries, approximately fifteen public ovens were recorded.

The history of the city of the Sassi di Matera is closely linked to the history of its Bread. Its shape, its organoleptic characteristics, the way of preparing it, make it a unique product in the world. A product that still remains at the center of the life of Matera’s citizens, making it an irreplaceable good.
In February 2008, Pane di Matera was awarded the IGP certification.
 
 DID YOU KNOW THAT…..

Each family took care of preparing its own loaf of Bread. At the base of the preparation was the yeast (“u lvet”), which was kept wrapped in a blanket and passed from family to family. Also characteristic was the closed-fist hand movement necessary to mix the flour with yeast and water (“trmbè”), an operation that took place on a solid wood board (“tavljr”). Once the dough was finished, the mass (“la moss”) was usually divided into three loaves of equal size and one smaller (“tre pjzz e n pzzarid”), and placed on a long and narrow board (“la tovl du pen”), which the oven assistant was responsible for collecting at the appointed.