By this time, we have been staying with Vito and Maria Tanzi in Mola for almost a week. We spent the previous weekend in Mola for the annual Festa and then started a number of daily road trips to places outside Mola, along with our other traveling companions, Atchet and Armida San Jose. Today we are going to make our first overnight trip and will be staying in Matera after visiting the towns of Gravina in Puglia and Altamura.
As in the earlier blog, it is only possible to give a few highlights of our various travels, together with some photos which will, hopefully, illustrate how rich and revelatory dear Vito and Maria made our whole stay with them. Once again, I want to thank them a thousand times over for being the most gracious and generous hosts EVER and for sharing all the wonders of Puglia with us.
I feel that each city and town we visited deserves its own blog; and maybe one day I shall do just that for fun and for the record. However, right now this blog is more a brief catalogue of our travels than an in-depth journal. I am merely trying to get something on paper (well, on the screen!) before my memory fades.
Here we go, again.....
GRAVINA IN PUGLIA
It is Wednesday, September 13 and we are heading out of Mola at about 9.30AM. Our first stop of the day will be Gravina in Puglia, a town which overlooks a deep and rocky gorge which was carved out of the limestone by a river over a thousand years ago. It also gouged out many caves which were inhabited in ancient times, some of them later becoming cave churches in the early days of Christianity.
We walked through the town and down a steep hill to one of the many caves which had been used for living, for a place of worship and a for a place of final rest--San Michelle Delle Grotte. Wandering through the various caves and caverns of this complex made you realize how old this land is, where human life and activity date back to Neolithic times.
Early human activity is detected above--early morning activity that is for Armida and Regee! In the next town we were going to visit--Altamura--I had read that the crystallized skeleton of the Man of Altamura (Homo neanderthalensis) was discovered in 1993. I could quite imagine bumping into a Neanderthal among these many caves and dark chambers!
Meanwhile, back in the sunlight of the winding streets of this hill town, we discovered that Gravina was the birthplace of Pope Benedict XXIII, hence the Piazza Benedetto XIII, which we visited next and found the beautiful Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta (see photo on the left). We also found the Caffe Bella Vista, a great place for coffee, granita, ice cream, pastries and anything else delicious. The photo above was taken by a very friendly and colorful lady who asked us to look "active!"
The Dominican Monastery "Santa Maria" in the main part of Gravina was enormous. There must have been more monks than population in its day! It reminded me of the vast nunnery in Mola. The irony is that Italy, like most of Western Europe, has now become deeply secular. Times change but the past continues to live with us in the form of all these magnificent buildings, cathedrals and churches.
ALTAMURA
It was time to start thinking about lunch and, in particular, thinking about the famous breads of Altamura, our next stop. Altamura has one of the oldest continuously operating bread ovens in Italy. Vito and Maria had been there many times before and had a particular bakery in mind but somehow we couldn't find it. However, we bumped into this place, Antico Forno Santa Caterina, supposedly operating since 1391. That's a long time to keep an oven fired up!
The small dining area outside this bakery was full but the host insisted that we sit down in a small street around the corner and he set up tables for us to sit at. Have a look at the photo on the left--our tables took up most of the street! Very soon a full meal appeared, a bottle of wine came out of nowhere and we were happily eating a lot of pane, focaccia and delicious salads.
Inside the bakery, there was a lot of activity, bread stacked up everywhere and the fabled oven was still burning after so many centuries. Atchet got this great photo (below) of the oven being loaded up with the next batch of bread or focaccia.
After lunch we continued to wander around the town and, lo and behold, we bumped into the bakery which Vito and Maria normally visited. It was siesta time so everyone had disappeared off the streets and this bakery was "resting" during the siesta. The head baker (below) was sitting outside having a glass of wine with a friend and greeted Vito and Maria like long lost friends. Yes, yes, this was where the "best bread in Altamura" was made.
We went inside and got talking to the young man behind the counter. He sort of knew that we had been to the other bakery so he put us straight on which bakery was the oldest. He said that this bakery had opened in 1423 and that was the "true date" of the oldest bakery in Italy. I believed him because he said it with such passion and conviction.
He also explained that Altamura bread came in two shapes--"tall" bread called u skuanete; and "short" bread shaped like a priest's hat (u cappidde de prevete). In the old days, he said, each family would prepare their own loaves of bread at home and then bring them to the bakery to be baked. So, these bakeries in Altamura had started as communal bakeries in the old days.
I found all this very fascinating. However, in case you thought that we did not look around the town and duly note its beautiful features and narrow streets, please see the photo above as we wandered towards Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta. (Do you remember Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Gravina)?
In the photo, you can just see the two bell towers of the cathedral. Evidently, it was commissioned by Frederick II whom you will remember from Castello del Monte--right?
MATERA
We arrived in Matera late in the afternoon after our visit to Altamura. Your first sight of Matera from the road is a little stupefying. It looks unreal, the buildings are piled on top of each other right up the mountainside. The whole town looks like it might slide down into the vast gorge below. In a week when we had seen so many wonders, I hesitate to say that this was the most remarkable place that we visited during our whole trip; but the more I learned about Matera's history, the more extraordinary, surreal and unique it became.
What I did not realize before is that Matera is not actually in Puglia. It is just across the border in the neighboring region of Basilicata. However, no trip to Puglia would be complete without visiting Matera which is quite remarkable by any standard.
Our Mercedes van did not have a sticker which would allow us to be dropped off in the town itself so we all piled out of the car and started the long walk down the steep and winding road to the point below which was at the very foot of the town.
This is where we were going to stay the night--in Le Botteghe. I think we were all very relieved that we did not have to climb up with our bags to a hotel at the top of the mountain. Maria had planned our whole trip with great care and foresight so the overnight stay in Matera was absolutely outstanding. Each couple had an excellent modern room in this old, old house. No cave-dwelling for us! And we had a little courtyard where we could all meet to have our breakfast the next morning.
It was quite startling to see the layout of the cave but also the ingenuity which made cave-dwelling possible. It almost made sense until you found out that families of eight persons lived here along with a dog and several small farm animals.
This is Margherita (above) who was the owner of The Botteghe. She was so welcoming and always concerned to make sure that we were comfortable. She immediately produced a lovely bottle of white wine and we sat on the balcony courtyard sipping our wine and also drinking in our new surroundings. She told us that she had inherited this house from her grandparents and that she had spent (borrowed?) a small fortune to convert the house into three gorgeous rooms with all mod cons and her office. We were some of her first guests and I am sure that her fledgling business will be a great success.
The town looked magical at night and we wandered around the outside wall which overlooked the ravine. Our part of town was full of small restaurants where you could sit outside and enjoy watching the world walk by. The temperature was perfect. Cool but not cold. We found this lovely restaurant (below) just down the road from us. Sitting there looking at the menu you felt that you must be in a major city rather than on the edge of an ancient chasm in a region dotted with thousands of caves and caverns.
It was hard to fathom that this area had been inhabited since Paleolithic times. Human habitation in the caves of Matera continued right up until the 50's when the State and local administrations reacted to reports of it being "the shame of Italy" and an area mired in abject poverty. Naturally, the local people resented government interference but in the end those "modern" cave-dwellers were compelled to move into houses in the town between the 50s and 70s.
In this respect, Matera is a real rags to riches story. It is now one of the fastest developing towns in Italy. It became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993 and a European Capital of Culture in 2019. And from being a relatively unknown town in the hill country of Basilicata, it has become a wildly popular national and international tourist destination. Vito told us all about its history and how it was the location of the great Carlo Levi novel "Christ Stopped at Eboli."
Courtesy Entertainment Weekly
I knew that it was also the location for the recent James Bond film "No Time to Die" but I did not see any Aston Martins or KTM motor bikes hurtling down the narrow streets and endless steps of the Sassi that night. Maybe tomorrow?
Of course, that was not the first movie to be made here. I discovered later that about 30 movies have been made here, including Pier Paolo Pasolini's "The Gospel According to St. Matthew" (one of my favorite films), Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," and Francesco Rosi's "Christ Stopped at Eboli." When you look at the photos of this remarkable town, you can understand why a movie director would be so entranced by this location.
I got up early the next morning, Thursday, September 14, to watch the sun rise over the Gravina ravine. I headed out towards the San Pietro Caveoso church which I had been told was about a mile away. I never got that far because I spent too much time taking photographs and just lost in thought.
The town was totally deserted except for a few joggers who plodded past me puffing and panting and generally looking out of place. In my mind this was a time to take in the dawn, to wander and to reflect on this strange, epic land. I wondered whether Paleolithic cave dwellers had prowled this ridge where I was walking before steeling themselves to go down into the ravine to hunt for food?
I saw this tree in the distance through my camera's viewfinder but as I drew closer I realized that it was a bronze sculpture. A small sign on the pedestal told me that the sculptress was Andrea Roggi and that the sculpture was entitled "Himeros."
Meanwhile, back home, Margherita had prepared our breakfast and coffee and laid it all out on our very own private balcony. Over breakfast we decided to visit the Casa Grotta Museum which showed you how people had lived in the caves of Matera in the old days.
It reminded me of my 7-day stay in Afgol, an Ethiopian village in the Tigray region where the World Bank was financing an irrigation project. I slept on a stone slab in a round stone hut with a calf and small donkey as my sleeping companions. They were not good company! The saving grace was the coffee ceremony at 5AM when the animals were cleared out along with the straw and the air was filled with the aroma of roasting coffee beans. But I digress....
We climbed to the upper part of the town to visit the Cathedral. This we did rather slowly but made it to the top and the main piazza up there. After looking around the cathedral, we decided to break into two groups.
One group (Vito, Atchet and Regee) decided to take a rather special sight-seeing car back down to the lower town; the other group (Maria, Armida et moi) decided to walk back down. It was agreed that we would meet all meet up at the San Pietro Caveoso Church down below which was about 1.5 miles away.
My two walking companions didn't have to carry me too far but my knees did get a bit wobbly towards the end after walking down thousands of stairs--but always taking in the stupendous views of the town.
For once, my iPhone "fitness ring" was fully accomplished and I was not instructed to burn off 398 more calories before stopping!
We all made it to the church of San Pietro Caveoso in the Sassi Caveoso. I would love to insert more photos and give more information about Maetera but I still have to cover so many more towns and cities that we visited. Maybe a separate blog later on this stupendous part of the world.
CRYPT OF ORIGINAL SIN
The last stop of the day was the Crypt of Original Sin and yet another cave where early Christians had worshipped. I honestly can't remember the name of any nearby town or village but we were taken to a small visitor center and had to wait a while until we were told to follow a lead car to the site of the crypt.
As there was absolutely no photography allowed in the crypt itself, I had to content myself with three photos of the surrounding land, the narrow gorge where the crypt was discovered quite recently by some inquisitive and adventurous children, plus a photo of a fresco that was hanging in the visitor center.
We walked down yet more steps to get to the crypt and then sat on stone steps in the crypt itself which had an incredible array of frescoes which had somehow survived largely intact down the many centuries since their creation. We had a 20-minute lecture on the story being told by the frescoes and then back to the car and back home for a much needed shower!
But this was not the end of our day! We still had a dinner date. Our dinner was to be to be specially prepared and demonstrated by Annalisa whom you have already met in her gorgeous apartment overlooking the Adriatic. I am sure that Regee is going to be doing a blog which will explain in great detail everything that we ate but here are a few photos of our spectacular Pugliese feast!
DINNER WITH ANNALISA & GIUSEPPE
We arrived just in time to catch the sunset. Could you have a more perfect setting for a very special dinner? Sunset on a balcony overlooking the Adriatic Sea. This is as good as it gets.
Starting with the basics--Annalisa throws in onions, garlic, tomatoes, mushrooms, salt and pepper.
Then slices of potatoes and zucchini.
Atchet loves to cook so he volunteers to help Annalisa.
There is a final layer of mussels (cozze) and then lots of pecorino cheese.
Finito! This delicious dish (Tiella Pugliese or patate e cozze) is complete and ready to eat.
And guess who really, really wanted a second serving?
OSTUNI
The next morning, still full of Annalisa's sumptuous dinner (but supplemented by cornetto integrale and cappuccino), we headed off to Ostuni. It is Friday, September 15, exactly one week since we arrived.
I did not get a a photo of Ostuni from a distance so I am using a free stock photo (with attribution) because this view of Ostuni with the sea in the background really emphasizes how spectacular the city is from this angle.
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I took this photo from within the city on the opposite side from the photo above. You can see Ostuni from a long way away because it sits atop a hill. It is known as the "White City" because the houses are white-washed with lime, a substance that supposedly helped contain infection during the time of the plague. An alternative story is that the town was spared the plague by its patron saint, Saint Orontius, who stands on an impressive column in the town square (below).
The Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta (the third one in two days!) is found in the Piazza Giovanni Paolo at the summit of the town. While it looks Gothic on the outside, the interior (below) is decidedly baroque.
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Finding our way around Ostuni was a breeze. Just take a photo of these signs and you will know exactly where you are going! I'm joking--the streets were narrow and winding and it was very easy to get lost.
There were so many beautiful shops in Ostuni and the ladies disappeared into several of them!
Some of our party decided that ice cream was the best way to tide them over until lunch.
This is the panoramic view from a point near the Cathedral. The countryside in this area is full of olive trees and vineyards and occasional glimpses of blue seas as you speed by in your car.
So, this is the end of Part 2 of our Voyage of Discovery. In Part 3, the final blog, we will head for the fascinating town of Alberobello which is full of trulli (below) and you will also find us visiting several other memorable towns such as Conversano, Lecce, Galatina and Gallipoli, among others.
You could spend months looking around Puglia and you would never tire of these extraordinary towns and all they have to offer.
PUGLIA, WE LOVE YOU!
What an epic trip! Looking forward to Part 3 of your Voyage of Discovery.
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