Matera

 

Matera (Matàrə in the Materano dialect) is an Italian town of 60 411 inhabitants, the capital of the province of the same name and the largest municipality in Basilicat by area.

It is known all over the world for the historic Sassi districts, which make it one of the oldest still inhabited cities in the world. The Sassi were recognized on 9 December 1993, in the assembly of Cartagena de Indias (Colombia), a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the first site in southern Italy to receive this recognition.

In 1663 it was separated from the province of Terra d'Otranto, of which it had been a part for centuries, to become, until 1806, the capital of the then province of Basilicata in the Kingdom of Naples. During this period the city experienced an important economic, commercial and cultural growth. Matera was the first city in the south to rise up in arms against Nazi-fascism and it is for this reason among the cities decorated with military valor for the war of liberation having been awarded in 1966 the silver medal for military valor and among the cities decorated with valor civil having been awarded the gold medal for civil valor in 2016.

On 17 October 2014 it was designated, together with Plovdiv (Bulgarian city), the European Capital of Culture in 2019.

 

Territory

«The city has a very curious aspect, it is situated in three deep valleys in which, with artifice, and on the native and dry stone, the churches sit above the houses and those hang below them, confusing the living and dead the room. The night lights make it look like a starry sky. "
(Giovan Battista Pacichelli, The Kingdom of Naples in Perspective)

The city is located in the eastern part of the Basilicata region at 401 m asl, bordering the south-western part of the metropolitan city of Bari (with the municipalities of Altamura, Gravina in Puglia and Santeramo in Colle) and the extreme north- western province of Taranto (with the municipalities of Ginosa and Laterza). It rises on the continuation of the Murge plateau to the east and the Bradanica pit to the west, crossed by the Bradano river. The course of this river is barred by a dam, built in the late 1950s for irrigation purposes, and the artificial lake created by the dam, called Lake San Giuliano, is part of a regional nature reserve called the San Giuliano nature reserve.

The Gravina di Matera, a left tributary torrent of the Bradano, flows into the deep natural pit that borders the two ancient districts of the city: Sasso Barisano and Sasso Caveoso. On the other side is the Murgia, which is partly part of the Natural Historical Archaeological Regional Park of the Rupestrian Churches, also known as the Murgia Materana park. The "Sassi", together with the cisterns and the water collection systems, are the peculiar characteristic of Matera. These are ancient aggregates of houses dug out of limestone, close to a deep ravine, the "Gravina". At the end of 1993, UNESCO declared the Sassi districts a World Heritage Site. In the countryside near Timmari there is also a newly formed mud volcano.

It borders the municipalities of Montescaglioso, Altamura, Miglionico, Laterza, Santeramo in Colle, Ginosa, Gravina in Puglia and Grottole. Furthermore, with 392.09 km² of territorial extension, Matera is the largest municipality in Basilicata.

Seismic classification: zone 3 (low seismicity), PCM Ordinance n. 3274 of 20/03/2003

 

Climate

According to the average data for the thirty years 1961-1990, the average temperature of the coldest month, January, is +6.0 ° C, while that of the hottest month, August, is +25.1 ° C.

 

History

The origins of Matera are very remote and evidence of this is the discovery in the surrounding area of ​​some seamless settlements since the Paleolithic age. In fact, in the caves scattered along the Materan ravines, various objects dating back to that time have been found, testifying to the presence of groups of hunters. In the Neolithic period the settlements became more stable, so much so that there are evident traces of several entrenched villages that date back to that period, in particular on the Murgia Timone. With the Metal Age the first urban center was born, that of the present Civita, on the right bank of the Gravina. Built on a prehistoric entrenched village, this probably has Greek origins, as stated by the Volpe in his secular and religious historical memoirs on the city of Matera, also citing Ughelli, Pacichelli and Father Bonaventura da Lama who had reached this conclusion. . This would be confirmed by the emblem of the city, the ox with the ears of corn, which according to the Fox himself is a typical symbol of Magna Graecia; moreover Gattini cites the hypothesis of some historians according to which he reproduced the emblem of the city of Metaponto, which was indeed an ox, while the ears of corn were recurring figures in Greek coins. Gattini confirms this also quotes some verses of the poet Tommaso Stigliani: "The seafarer of ancient Metaponto, which at our age called Matera", and refers to the welcome given by Matera to the Metapontine refugees after the destruction of their city by Hannibal.

In the period of Magna Graecia Matera had close relations with the colonies located on the southern coast and, subsequently, in Roman times it was only a transit and supply center. In 664 A.D. Matera passed under the Lombard rule and was annexed to the Duchy of Benevento. The 9th and 10th centuries were characterized by bitter fights between the Lombards themselves, the Saracens and the Byzantines, who tried several times to take over the territory; the city was destroyed by the troops of Ludovico II, emperor of the Franks, in an attempt to expel the Saracens.

 

In the meantime, starting from the eighth century, the Matera area was the scene of a notable immigration of Benedictine and Byzantine monks, who settled along the caves of the Gravina transforming them into rock churches. After the Norman settlement in 1043 the city experienced a period of peace. In the following centuries, between famines and earthquakes, Matera was a royal city for a long time, as it freed itself from feudal domination by redeeming itself several times, but under the Aragonese the city was ceded to Count Giovan Carlo Tramontano, who in 1514 was killed by the population oppressed by taxes. In 1663, during the Spanish period, Matera left the province of Terra d'Otranto, of which it was an integral part until then, becoming the capital of Basilicata and seat of the Royal Audience. This title remained until 1806, when Giuseppe Bonaparte transferred the competences to Potenza. During the Risorgimento period, the Lucanian prodictatorial committee did not keep its promises on the redistribution of state-owned lands, a malaise began to spread, also fomented by the legitimists, which exploded in Matera on August 8, 1860 with the Gattini massacre, the first symptom of rebellion the post-unification brigandage. In 1927 the city became the provincial capital.

Matera was the first city in the South to rise up against the Nazis; in fact, on 21 September 1943, the day of the insurrection and the massacre of Matera, the people of Matera rose up against the oppression exercised by the Nazi occupation. Eleven people died as a result of retreating German machine guns. The day reached its climax with the ferocious Nazi retaliation that cost the lives of 15 other people, both civilians and soldiers, blown up in the "militia palace". In 1945 there were among the first in the south, popular uprisings for the assignment of uncultivated lands that were resolved with the enactment between 1946 and 1947 of the Ponte decrees (by Aurelio Ponte, prefect of Matera); they were the forerunners of the agrarian reform. In 1948 the question of the Sassi di Matera arose, first raised by Palmiro Togliatti, and later by Alcide De Gasperi. In 1952 a national law established the evacuation of the Sassi and the construction of new residential districts which developed the new city into which the 15,000 inhabitants of the Sassi converged. In 1980 it was partially damaged by the Irpinia earthquake and by the aftershocks. In 1986 a new national law financed the recovery of the ancient districts of Matera, now degraded by over thirty years of neglect. In 1993, at a conference in Cartagena de Indias, the city was proclaimed "World Heritage Site" and in 2014 "European Capital of Culture 2019".

 

Etymology

According to some hypotheses (for example that of Cely Colajanni), Matera was formerly called Mataia ole by the Greeks, which derives from Mataio olos, whose meaning is completely empty, with reference to the Gravina, a ditch crossed by streams; further hypothesis is that the name derives from Mata (heap of rocks), a root used for various geographical names. Another theory, rather imaginative, derives Matera from the Greek Meteoron or starry sky, given that some chroniclers of the past, observing the Sassi illuminated at night, have described them as a reflection of the starry sky above. And there are also those who link the toponym to Mater or "mother earth", to Materia (matheria) or Materies, terms that indicated wood for cutting or building, in reference to the wooded areas where the city stood; in reality it was wrongly derived from the Latin materia, as it is originally a question of bases designating "the land of the ravine"; -eria is an entry with the meaning of "moat, gravina": happen. ḫāru, ḫarru, ḫarû (dig deep). Crossing of mātu with the base of happen. matāḫu (to rise). Gattini, on the other hand, refers the toponym to the Hebrew terms Matterah (prison) or Me terah (pure water). Others claim that the name derives from the initials of Metaponto and Heraclea, having welcomed refugees from the two cities after their destruction; finally Mateola, the ancient name of the city, could derive from the Roman consulate of Quinto Cecilio Metello Numidico, who rebuilt it and had it surrounded by walls and high towers, or from "terra alta": matu, Aramaic mata (earth) elû (high). Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis historia (Liber III, 105) called Mateolani the inhabitants of the city and listed them among the Apuli, even if the adjective ending in -anus clearly highlights the Oscan influence of the Lucanians, as the city was located right on the Apulian-Lucan border in the region formerly called Peucezia.

 

Coat of arms

The Comuni Italiani website describes the city's coat of arms in this way: Blue to the silver still ox with three ears in the mouth and a lily crown on the horns, surmounted by the letter M, all in gold. Motto: Bos Lassus Firmius Figit Pedem.

The Latin motto Bos lassus firmius figit pedem can be translated as: the tired ox sinks its paw more firmly; this motto, which indicates how a peaceful people but tired of abuses can rebel against the yoke, represents the moral of the episode that saw the people of Matera rebel and assassinate Count Giovan Carlo Tramontano.

According to Racioppi, the coat of arms of Matera is a talking weapon, as the letter "M" at the top would be the initial of the city name, while the ears in the ox's mouth would add the rest of the name; in fact spiga in Greek is said "Ather-Eros", therefore from the set of words we get Mather-Eros, from which Matera. The crown that the ox has on his head would indicate that the city was free, that is, not dependent on any feudal lord but directly on the royal crown.

According to other interpretations, the shield bears on the top of the field, in silver, the letter M in gold; and in the lower part of the field is an ox that the heraldists use to say "passerby", with three ears of corn in its mouth. A princely crown surmounts the head of the ox. Around the edge of the shield runs a list on which the motto of "Bos lassus firmius figit pedem" is written. The saying was perhaps coined after the killing of Count Gian Carlo Tramontano, expressing the tiredness of the oppression and the taxes that the citizens of Matera had to pay to the count. As for the shield, the letter M in gold is presumed to indicate the initial letter of the name of the city. But according to others it would also indicate the word town hall having been Matera Regio Demanio, and therefore directly dependent on the king. This also explains the reason for the princely crown on the ox's head. Therefore, the figure of the ox remains the most difficult to decipher. There are those who believe that the ox indicates the Del Balzo family, which comes from the French baux, whose phonetics closely resemble the word ox. Others firmly believe that the ox and the ears symbolize the possession of fertile lands dedicated to pastoralism and agriculture. The ears, on the other hand, have a certain similarity to those of the Metapontine coinage, which gives greater certainty about the name of Matera, which could derive from the founders of the city, the citizens of Metaponto and Heraclea, who escaped the Romans. So Met-Hera.