Up early to go to Mattera and Alberobello today. It’s a lovely day this morning. We are washed, dressed, fed and coffee’d with notable punctuality. On the road by 9:15.
After a short, unplanned scenic detour, we are headed straight for Mattera. So, If I haven’t mentioned anything about parking in this part of the world, the only place I can think of that rivals how much of a pain it is, is downtown Grand Rapids. When your party consists of two GIANT vehicles (meaning a medium SUV and a mini-van), parking is a major part of your experience. In central and northern Italy where tourism is a more significant and established part of the economy, parking is a bit more thought out and planned for… and the signage is more helpful. But I rant…
We do find a garage and squeeze (!!!) our giant cars into two tiny spots. There is some honking and choice words from locals as this process takes a little time. On the bright side, garage parking cost about 2 euro for per car for the entire time we were in Mattera.
And it is still a lovely day.. for May flowers. Raining and windy… sigh. But it’s still Italy.
Mattera is plain mind blowing. In the 1950s it was considered the “shame of Italy”. Modernization did NOT come to Mattera after the war and there were people still living in modified caves without running water or electricity! The thing is they were OK with that. But the government makes everyone move out of the caves except a couple of families who somehow got a pass on the rules. They built them houses on the outskirts of the city. The problem was that the government then didn’t do anything to bring the old city up to date… it turned into a slum full of drugs and crime and the usual suspects. It wasn’t until the 80s that the sassi (cave dwellings) began to be restored and updated and in 1993 the area was designated a Unesco world heritage site and in 2019 it was named the European Capital of Culture! It is the 3rd oldest continuously occupied city in the world after Alepo and Jerricho. There have been people living in this valley, in this spot as a community for 12,000 years. Ow. I thought living in the same house for 12 years was a long time.
We had a wonderful guided tour led by the lovely and very knowledgeable Ganella. She was patient with our pace and our questions. Her English was quite good and we were happy to follow her through the rain, up and down the stone steps and across the slippery limestone courtyards and now we all feel like experts on Mattera. Oh… and they’re going to start filming the next James Bond movie in Mattera in the next couple of weeks.
You can see in the stones that were cut from the walls of the valley and excavated from the caves that the whole area was at one time under the sea! The little sandstone carved rosettes are actually grills for vent shafts from cave dwellings below the level you see for air and smoke. They are everywhere. the layers and layers of excavated cave dwellings are boggling.
Oh… and a really sweet kitty.
We decide to go home through Alberobello, city of a bazillion trulli. Parking was of course an issue but we all have legs (I made sure to check) so we took the first couple of spots we could find and set off walking. We walk… and walk and eventually we do find the trulli center of town. There were hundreds of trulli that formed the whole center of the old city. Trulli shops, trulli homes, trulli hotels, trulli bars, trulli chiropractor’s offices… mostly white and natural stone colors with symbols for luck and to ward off bad juju painted on the roofs.
This is also where we find St Lucy… bringer of light in the darkness of winter, protector of the blind and patron saint of googly eyes.
We didn’t have a lot of time in Alberobello because we had to get back to the house and get ready for 7pm dinner reservations.
Aaaaand when we get back to the villa and still haven’t received a reservation confirmation re figure out that we don’t have a reservation because… they are closed on Tuesday. Looks like cheese and salami and caprese salad for dinner then. It’s all good.
Tomorrow we load up and head north along the Adriatic …
Distracted1 