Review of tour - Part 1
My daughter and I took this tour together in celebration of her birthday. She loves Italy, and this was a region that neither she nor I had yet visited. I’m very glad to have seen this region, but I wish that I had done it earlier or later in the year, because the weather was uncomfortably hot for the entire tour — in the 90s most days, with one day peaking at over 100. We were a group of 22 seasoned travelers, all from the East Coast except for one couple from Australia. On the schedule that our Tour Director, Thomas, passed out at the beginning of the tour, he listed the daily activity level. Most days were “moderate to robust,” with one day being simply “robust.” I think that at least one of the other days, our first full day in Matera, could have been characterized simply as “robust.”
I was surprised to learn that Matera is not in Puglia, but in Basilicata, on the border of Puglia. Wikipedia reports that it is the 3rd oldest city in the world, after Aleppo and Jericho. Our hotel’s rooftop bar offered a gorgeous view of the city, as did the plaza in front of the hotel. Take pictures during the day and at night. The night-time views are gorgeous. When we were there, we were told that Mel Gibson was filming “The Chosen,” (definitely not based on Chaim Potok’s book of the same name!) using the city and countryside to portray Jerusalem at the time of Christ, and that he had used the same backdrop in “The Passion of the Christ.” From the rooftop bar, we could see the film crew working in the distance.
Matera is made of stone. It’s beige, beige and more beige, but beautiful in its own way. We began our touring with a visit to a multimedia presentation about the city that showed people and livestock sharing space in caves, stassis, well into the 1950s, when it was called “the Shame of Italy” because of the unsanitary living conditions. The government then moved people out of the stassis into housing developments located in the modern part of the city (which we did not visit), leaving the stassis abandoned. They have since been transformed into hotels, restaurants and shops, and in 2019, Matera was named the European Capital of Culture. It’s also a UNESCO World Heritage site. The presentation that we saw was about 20-30 minutes long and was an excellent introduction to the city and its history. After our lunch (with wine, as I believe all included meals were) in a cave restaurant (down hills and multiple steps), we visited a cave museum that was furnished to show how people lived, complete with photos of a family, their donkeys and the “manure room.” Given the heat, Thomas took pity on the group and ordered Tuk-Tuks to take people back to the hotel, avoiding the uphill climb and steps. Most people, including me, took advantage of the Tuk-Tuks.I used some free time later that afternoon to visit the cathedral that was across the plaza from our hotel. It had an entrance fee of 3.5 euros. A portion of the cathedral has been excavated and the excavated area covered with clear flooring, so I could look down and see what looked like Roman ruins and Byzantine-era frescoes.