Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
MATERA IN THE MOVIES
Matera's unique geography makes it wonderfully photogenic: Italian director, writer and intellectual
Pier Paolo Pasolini filmed
Il Vangelo Secondo Matteo
(The Gospel According to St Matthew) here in
1964. Not a Christian himself, Pasolini set out on an exploration of the life of Christ using the words
of the gospel itself. It is visually and conceptually hugely striking, infused with revolutionary spirit
and featuring a cast of nonprofessional actors.
Forty years later, Mel Gibson came to town to make
The Passion of the Christ
, which follows in
grueling detail the last 12 hours of Christ's life, from his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane to his
crucifixion at Golgotha; this was filmed at the Belvedere (
Click here
). Mel's three-month stay in Mat-
era was welcomed by the locals, many of whom were cast as extras;
Trattoria Lucana
0835 33 61 17; Via Lucana 47;
Mon-Sat) still serves its
homage dish
Fettuccine alla Mel Gibson
.
Film fans might want to follow a visit to Matera with a stay in nearby Bernalda, the ancestral home
of film maker Francis Ford Coppola. In what is clearly a labour of love, Coppola has restored a histor-
ic mansion in the town to create the upmarket
Palazzo Margherita
( 0835 54 90 60;
www.coppolaresorts.com/palazzomargherita
;
Corso Umberto 64; ste incl breakfast & cooking lessons
from €360-€1800, 2-night minimum stay) hotel. The lovely salon upstairs doubles as a screening room
where you can watch classic Italian movies from a library compiled by Coppola for guests. And if
you're just passing through, have a coffee at the hotel's Cinecittà bar, hung with glamorous black-and-
white images of Italian stars and directors. You'll have to ask locals to find the hotel as it has no sign:
Coppola prefers it to blend in to this otherwise unstarry little town.
The prosperous town became the capital of Basilicata in 1663, a position it held until
1806 when the power moved to Potenza. In the decades that followed, an unsustainable
increase in population led to the habitation of unsuitable grottoes - originally intended as
animal stalls - even lacking running water. The dreadful conditions fostered a tough and
independent spirit: in 1943, Matera became the first Italian city to rise up against German
occupation.
By the 1950s more than half of Matera's population lived in the
sassi,
typical caves
sheltering families with an average of six children. The infant mortality rate was 50%. In
his poetic and moving memoir,
Christ Stopped at Eboli,
Carlo Levi describes how chil-
dren would beg passers-by for quinine to stave off the deadly malaria. Such publicity fi-
nally galvanised the authorities into action and in the late 1950s about 15,000 inhabitants
were forcibly relocated to new government housing schemes. In 1993 the
sassi
were de-
clared a Unesco World Heritage Site, and the town is currently gearing up to be the
European Capital of Culture in 2019. Ironically, the town's lack of development due to
years of misery has transformed it into Basilicata's leading tourist attraction.
