Magical Matera -35
To comprehend the origins of the fascinating cave churches of Matera, you need really only understand how the Middle Ages affected this area. For centuries starting roughly at the end of the first millennium, a Who's Who of world leaders sent their armies up and down the eastern and western coasts of southern Italy, either to protect their dominions or to usurp someone else's. Some of those armies strayed into Basilicata, but most took the more streamlined Apulian, Calabrian and Campanian routes. This relative obscurity made it possible for another "army" to invade the region: the Benedictine and Basilian monks who were fleeing from the persecution of generations of foreign "infidels." These monks literally "dug in," excavating individual cells, tiny chapels and even some spacious churches in the hills, valleys and ravines around Matera.
Magical Matera -35
To comprehend the origins of the fascinating cave churches of Matera, you need really only understand how the Middle Ages affected this area. For centuries starting roughly at the end of the first millennium, a Who's Who of world leaders sent their armies up and down the eastern and western coasts of southern Italy, either to protect their dominions or to usurp someone else's. Some of those armies strayed into Basilicata, but most took the more streamlined Apulian, Calabrian and Campanian routes. This relative obscurity made it possible for another "army" to invade the region: the Benedictine and Basilian monks who were fleeing from the persecution of generations of foreign "infidels." These monks literally "dug in," excavating individual cells, tiny chapels and even some spacious churches in the hills, valleys and ravines around Matera.