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.
«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
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.
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".
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.
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.