i knew it, just from seeing commercials -- the passion of the christ was filmed in matera, italy.

i went to matera with some friends last year. it's located in the basilicata region of italy, pretty much where the arch of the boot is. i had never heard of matera before, but my friend robin had read about it being a UNESCO world heritage site in a guidebook, and insisted we make a stop there.

i'm really glad we did. matera ended up being one of the most impressive places that i've seen in all of italy, and certainly one of the most haunting. i haven't seen the film yet (and i'm not sure i will), but i don't really think gibson could have picked a better place to shoot the movie.

matera, on the surface, is a pretty normal southern italian town. it's a bit dusty and desolate, but it's got rows of nice shops, a beautiful main piazza, and it's a university town, so at night, it's lively and full of students on the streets (though during the day we found it kind of creepy, because we saw only old italian men walking around. seriously, exclusively, just dozens and dozens of old italian men in their little caps with their pipes. no young person or woman in sight).

but the reason matera is interesting is for what it used to be. up until the 1960s, the residents of the town were mostly troglodytes -- that is, they lived in caves called sassi (meaning, simply, stone). the sassi are hewn from the soft rock of the ancient, deep gravina ravine that splits the town, and though most of them are basically nothing more than holes, a lot of them bear signs of baroque and renaissance architecture that influenced their construction from the 12th to 16th centuries and before. some claim the cave dwellers are the oldest community in italy.

the italian government decided only in the 1960s that matera was a national disgrace, after carlo levi published his book christ stopped at eboli, which detailed the rampant poverty and disease that afflicted the cave-dwellers (who lived usually more than six to a cave, often with horses, chicken and sheep in there for good measure). the 30,000+ residents were forcibly removed to more modern subsidized housing on the outskirts of town. the sassi were boarded up and guarded to prevent anyone from coming back, and so the caves fell into disuse and eventually came to be regarded largely as a peculiar historical and tourist site.

a lot of the sassi are today being repopulated by trendy cafes and artsy shops, but overall, it's still a really creepy place. you have to go to the main piazza vittorio veneto to even glimpse the caves, and then you take a winding staircase located at the corner of the piazza in order to enter below to the sassi area. cynthia, robin and i got lost several times, and honestly, i felt kind of a sense of terror when we couldn't find our way out of the dusty, winding passageways to the piazza at dusk. the scariest part was when we came upon a family standing in front of one sassi that was set back from the pathway. there was a gaunt father and mother, and a young daughter that was playing with a dog amongst the the trash that littered the doorway. a cardboard sign next to them read: “Cinque euro. Venire a vedere la casa vera di una famiglia dei sassi” – Five euro to come see a real house of a family of the caves. we kind of just stopped and stared for a second and then walked quickly the other way.

the best part of our trip to matera was definitely an unofficial tour we took of the sassi churches. the cave-dwellers were an incredibly devoted people and built over a hundred rock churches. they were actually some of the first structures built, and they are the caves that are located highest on the ravine. anyway, i was pretty much oversaturated with cathedrals in italy at that point, but the rock churches were insanely beautiful and moving. they had low ceilings that dripped with condensation and altars carved right out of the walls. many of the churches were decorated with rotting byzantine frescoes, and stalactites served as columns.

two rambling entries about italy in under 24 hours. someone needs to get a grip.