Historically, by “city” we mean a complex and fairly numerous human settlement, composed of homes and structures for community life, which arose and consolidated following a process of cultural, economic and administrative centralization of its population, lasting over time.
A city, therefore, is something very different from the single and sporadic human settlement that may have been present on its territory in previous historical phases.
For this reason, it cannot be said that Matera was a prehistoric city, even if its rural territory has yielded traces of human presence dating back to the Neolithic and Paleolithic periods. However, it is correct to say that the city dates back to the early medieval period, when the existence of a stable and large community began to be documented in Matera.
In the territory of Matera, therefore, in prehistoric times the first men lived in natural caves. In the Matera Murgia Park – which covers an area of approximately 8000 hectares – the oldest archaeological remains date back to the Paleolithic. They were found about four kilometers from Matera, in the so-called Bat Cave, a karst cave reused and modified in later periods. The cave was formed naturally thanks to the chemical and mechanical action of meteoric water, which over the millennia had shaped the limestone rock.
Natural caves are very different from artificial caves, which are dug by man into the rock using metal tools, modeling houses, churches, fovee, cisterns, stables, factories, tanneries, nevieres, dovecotes, apiaries, and more. In prehistory, before the metal age, there were no tools or utensils with which to create artificial caves.
Prehistoric archaeological remains from the Neolithic period have been found in Trasano and Murgia Timone, right in front of the Sassi. In Murgecchia, Tirlecchia and Serra d’Alto there are the remains of entrenched villages from the Neolithic period, in which the herds of pastoral communities were defended thanks to trenches dug into the rock, while the homes were made up of simple wooden huts.
Almost always, in these same sites, archaeological finds belonging to the Metal Age have also emerged.
Artificial caves therefore began to be excavated by the men of Matera only starting from the early Middle Ages.
The first layout of the actual city, the first stable, organized and protected residential nucleus was formed in the Civita area. This is the highest district of the historic centre, a sort of acropolis, of great strategic importance for spotting enemies. The Civita area extends over a rocky ridge that reaches a height of 401 meters above sea level; its oldest archaeological finds have been dated to the metal age, about three thousand years ago.
The first document in which the name of the city appears dates back to the period of Lombard domination of southern Italy, i.e. the 8th century AD. It subsequently passed into the hands of the Arabs of the Emirate of Bari, being set on fire and destroyed in 871 by the Frankish emperor Ludovico II.
The Civita fortress was defended by Castelvecchio, traces of which remain in current toponymy. The hill stands between two steep natural valleys, or scarps, within which lie the two Sassi districts, the Caveoso and the Barisano. They probably were born in the early Middle Ages essentially as rock settlements, dug into the rock, showing an appearance completely identical to the landscape, dotted with excavated places, which still appears today on the opposite side of the ravine.
These settlements, or farmhouses or villages were mainly made up of artificial caves, dug into the rock by the manual work of medieval man. The excavated places of cave houses, factories, cisterns, stables, etc. they were placed along the sides of the two ravines on different levels, connected by paths, ledges and stairways dug into the rock.
A first, narrower city wall was probably built in the Norman period, in the 11th century AD. Subsequently, starting from the Angevin period, the pre-existing system of walls, towers and defensive gates was gradually enlarged and strengthened. Between the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern age, built or palace houses were superimposed on the excavated cave houses.
In the 13th century the Civita was crowned, at its highest point, by a beautiful Romanesque style Cathedral, recognizable from any point of the city. It is dedicated to the Madonna della Bruna and Sant’Eustachio, patron saints of Matera.
Of the two Sassi, the oldest is the Caveoso, oriented towards the south, towards the municipality of Montescaglioso, formerly Mons Caveosus. It almost has the shape of the steps of an amphitheatre, cavea in Latin and Italian and has the largest number of excavated rooms.
The Sasso Barisano district, oriented towards the north, perhaps takes its name from being stretched out towards the city of Bari.
The first documents in which the toponyms Saxum Caveosum and Saxum Barisanum appear belong to the late Middle Ages. The name Sasso derives from the Latin saxum, rock, cliff, which is synonymous with rupes, cliff, rock, precipice, ravine, precipice, and also synonymous with mons, mountain, mountain, rocky protrusion. In ancient Rome, for example, Rupes Tarpeia or Saxum Tarpeium was the tufaceous cliff of the Capitoline Hill, from which those condemned to death for treason were thrown. The toponym Sasso is in the nomenclature of several Italian municipalities, such as Sasso Marconi, Castel del Sasso, Sasso di Castalda, which are located near a cliff.
The Piano is the district of the historic center of Matera which is the ground floor of the city. It is leaning against the Civita and it is running along the upper edges of the two Sassi. In practice the Piano area is the plateau from which the two Sassi scarps (as well as the same side of the ravine where they are located) begin to slope down. The Piano area began to develop during the Renaissance period with its normally built (and not excavated) houses and palaces, overlapping the many pre-existing hypogeum (or underground places) which were dating back to the medieval era. The construction of normal built homes in the Piano district then continued uninterruptedly, especially in the Baroque age, then in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Its first built inhabited nucleus began to develop from Piazza del Sedile, a few steps from the Cathedral, at the confluence of Via Duomo and Via delle Beccherie, and then extended onto the edge of the Sasso Caveoso, from Piazza Pascoli to Piazza San Francesco d’Assisi, and on that of Sasso Barisano, from Via delle Beccherie to Piazza Vittorio Veneto, to Via San Biagio, up to Piazza San Giovanni Battista. Connecting these two opposite sectors is the area which, starting from Piazza Pascoli, crosses Via Ridola and continues towards Via del Corso until reaching Piazza Vittorio Veneto.
To summarize the shape of the historic center of Matera, we can use the poetic imagination of a late 16th century chronicler, Eustachio Verricelli, who described the city imagining that it had the shape of a bird:
“(Matera) takes the shape of a bird without a tail because the walled city (the Civita) is the body, the square and half-walled warehouses (the Piano) are the neck and head, two villages which are one to the east towards Bari called the Sasso Barisano and the other one to our left towards Monte Scaglioso called the Sasso Caveoso without walls are the wings”
