Troglodytes everywhere!

Ok, so you know your ancestors lived in caves but do you know what their address was? By chance, we stumbled across a whole town that does!
Until the 1960’s, the population of Matera lived in limestone caves in the side of a ravine, (Don’t believe us? Google Matera Italy). We are not talking a dozen or so cave houses here…. a couple of thousand cave dwellings and churches make up an area known as “The Sassi”.
Sure there were improvements over the 9000 years of occupation; doors, paved streets, some dwellings even had electricity, but town was poverty stricken, absent of running water and sewers and riddled with Malaria... the shame of Italy. The shame that eventually sparked the forcible relocation of the entire town to a new development atop the ravine.
Almost forgotten for the next 20 years, this town is so old and so unique it has featured as backdrop for a number of movies, most recently Mel’s “Passion Of The Christ” which was filmed virtually entirely here.

Such a unique place does not go undiscovered by tourism for long, so now artisans, a few restaurants, and hotels are beginning to refurbish the caves and make them liveable again. The hotel that we were in was one of these, you will see pictures in the Matera album. One chilly day we set off from our cave hotel to discover what cave living was like in the 50’s and 60’s. It seems that by then the average number of people per dwelling was 2 parents and 3 children, (Matera had a 50% infant mortality rate!). Inside the typically 2 or 3 room cave, there would be a small room for cooking, a general living area for eating and sleeping, (open the draws in the bedside chest and turn them into beds for the kids) and the third area would house grains and the family donkey (chickens live under the bed). With half of the town untouched since the relocation, we had a great day exploring the caves, many still containing remnants of their final occupants. A short but fascinating visit into recent history.

Leaving Matera early in the morning as a cold snap hit, we sat on the train platform realizing that we had seriously underestimated the chilly Italian autumn. We sat with all our clothes on, huddled together in a miserable attempt at keeping warm. Finally the first of many trains arrived, and we began to thaw. Matera to Sicily took about 12 hours and 5 different trains… some with as little as 5 minutes to transfer between them. Strangely enough, the trains all ran like clockwork and we made it to Sicily without missing a single connection!