Southern Italy’s Ancient Cave Dwellings

The rock-cut dwellings of Matera in southern Italy run along the edges of the deep ravine furrowed by the Gravina River in the middle of the Murgia plateau.  The caverns and grottoes on the limestone gorge have provided habitation for humans since the Paleolithic era. The dwellings are known as Sassi, meaning ‘Stones’. The Sassi housed a prehistoric community of cave people thought to be among the first human settlements in all of Italy. One site says that this settlement contains more than a thousand dwellings and a large number of shops and workshops. Human life appears to have been going on non-stop on the site for at least 35,000 years.

Millennia later, the Sassi people built their houses on the outer ground, assigning the caves a by-function of storage, cellars and stalls. But starting in 1800 AD the town experienced a long period of decay because of recurring agricultural crises, and the people were compelled to use the caves as dwellings again. In 1952 the Italian government passed a special bill on the Sassi to forcibly transfer, by means of house exchange, over 15,000 people to new quarters in the modern city.

Our Matera guide for the wonderful Heart of Southern Italy tour I’m on had grown up in the Sassi before the relocation. He spoke of the early shame and later, the reclaimed pride of Sassi residents.

Sim (seated) and his childhood friend from the Sassi, chef extraordinaire who cooked for us at traditional outdoor restaurant in Matera

This haunting place called the Sassi in Matera has evoked in me a deep sense of wonder and awe. In one of the cave “churches” (pagan temple might be a more accurate) , some of us could intensely sense the spiritual energy of the past. Time, as we now know, all depends on where you are standing in the universe. I felt as if I could move s step or two to one side and be present in the time-space of these  long ago ancestors. Through the flimsy curtain of time,  it seemed I could feel the warmth of their altar fire, and hear it crackling as they gathered for ceremony.