The cave church, which takes its name from the neighborhood in which it is located, is the largest, by extension, of the cave churches in the historic center of Matera, and constitutes an example of the transition from excavated to built architecture.
Formerly called the Church of San Pietro de veteribus, its first structure, below the floor, dates back to the 12th-13th century.
Having become an abbey church in the 15th century, its excavation began to be expanded with the addition of side chapels, of which only the final part of the chapel remains, behind the second altar of the right nave. Here there are the frescoes of an Annunciation and of Saints Vito, Eustachio, Agostino, Canio and Caterina d’Alessandria.
The current shape of the church, a Latin cross, was obtained with subsequent works carried out in the 18th century, when both the simple but elegant façade, with its four-lobed rose window, and the bell tower, erected on a rocky shelf, were built in masonry. Furthermore, from the left nave, access was created to underground rooms designed to house deceased religious men and brothers, who were placed sitting on seats carved into the rock, and removed only at the end of their decomposition. This funeral practice, dating back to that period, was called scolatura. In this drain or putridarium the purification of the deceased on his journey towards eternity was symbolically represented, accompanied by the prayers of brothers and sisters: with the disintegration of the external part (body) of the corpse, only the bones remained in the end, a symbol of purity.
In 1903, unfortunately, due to excessive humidity, the parish, together with most of its sacred furnishings, including the baptismal font, was transferred to the church of Sant’Agostino.
Unfortunately, in the 60s and 70s, when the Sassi neighborhoods were almost uninhabited, following the first special law of 1952, most of the works of art were stolen or damaged by vandalism.
Starting from the entrance, along the right nave there are three altars:
the altar of Saint Joseph, on which there was the altarpiece of the Holy Family, of which today only part of the wooden frame remains, stolen in 1977;
the altar of the Madonna della Consolazione, with the high relief of the Madonna with Child crowned by Angels, attributed to Stefano da Putignano;
the altar of the Blessed Sacrament, which preserves a precious majolica floor.
In the central nave there was the eighteenth-century wooden high altar, currently preserved at the Superintendence of Basilicata. Here there was also a seventeenth-century altarpiece, depicting the Virgin between Saints Peter and Paul, also stolen in 1977.
In the left nave, starting from the back, we find:
the altar of the Holy Crucifix, with the oval gold foil frame of the sixteenth-century wooden Crucifix, now placed on the main altar of the church of Sant’Agostino; on the sides of the oval there are the calcarenite statues of the Madonna delle Grazie and San Michele Arcangelo and, above, the Trinity;
the altar of the Annunciation, with statues and furnishings in calcarenite, seriously damaged by vandalism;
the altar of Santa Maria Maddalena, with a statue of Sant’Antonio da Padova.
At the end of the left nave, near the entrance, you can see a hole, in which the casting of bronze took place for the creation of bells. Furthermore, there is the entrance to the Sancta Sanctorum, where the liturgical furnishings, vestments, sacred books and relics of the saints were kept. Here there are the sixteenth-century frescoes of the Madonna and Child and of San Donato Vescovo.
