The long-awaited trip to
Puglia, February 23 - March 5, 11 days 10 nights, was both relaxing and hectic. Relaxing, because we were driven, lodged, fed, taken on guided tours, and entertained; hectic because we had too many short stops in too many little towns where we saw too many unremarkable sights. On the 7
th day (aren't you supposed to rest?) the
hecticity has taken its toll, and we left our camera in a restaurant in
Otranto. So no personal pictures, only maps...
... and links. We left on Monday, 2/23. The first stop was in Paestum (again, see December 9). Next morning we looked at the Paestum temples and museum and headed further south, to Matera.
Matera is in
Basilicata, near the
Puglia border. The main attraction in
Matera is the so-called
Sassi di Matera, which are two ancient districts of town where houses are carved into rock, basically caves.
Nice picture -- we were there. And lots of pictures
here.
The caves date back to prehistoric men, so
Matera is one of the oldest known settlements in Italy. Unfortunately, the
Sassi were still inhabited in the 1950s -- people living in extreme poverty in cave dwellings together with farm animals with virtually no windows, no water, no even outhouses (collected the stuff in big pots inside). The child mortality rate was 50%. Finally the government closed the area and moved the people to modern housing. Not just closed, blocked the view of it from the main square of town!
Now they are trying to revive the
Sassi as a tourist attraction: set up a tiny exhibit of the past life in a cave house, even talk about "negative" architecture (carved out instead of built up). All this is pretty sad. The tour guide girl said her grandmother keeps asking her what exactly tourists find there. But it is pretty unique and a
UNESCO protected site since 1993.
Matera's other claim to fame is the movies. Mel Gibson shot here
The Passion of the Christ (one of the desolate hills seen from the main square served as Golgotha). Giuseppe
Tornatore shot here pieces of his
L'uomo delle stelle (
The Star Maker), which is one of my favorite films.
We didn't sleep in a cave, but moved to a friendly
four-star hotel in
Massafra in
Puglia about 60 km away.
The next morning we started in real
Puglia: first
Taranto on the west coast, (the
archeological museum, then lunch), then
Galipoli (port,
fish market), then
hotel in Galatina (we stayed there for three nights, looking at the sights around).
Galatina is the center of
Salento, which is the
Griko area in
Puglia. The
Griko language is still spoken by some old people in a few communities. We visited
Calimera,
Corigliano,
Sternatia,
Martignano, I think. In
Martignano a local dance group (3 people) performed traditional songs and dances for us (with the audience participation). Too bad the pictures are lost. Then we went up from the dance cellar to taste and buy local wine and snacks. (M managed to buy a little vase used for decoration.)
Our guide explained that the tarantella originated in the 16
th-17
th centuries when it was performed in loud and colorful ceremonies in a
public square to cure people, mostly women, afflicted by a kind of hysteria believed to be caused by a tarantula bite. According to the guide, the condition was common because women were locked up in houses and went nuts; she also said tarantula bites are not toxic. The
wikipedia article on tarantism says the whole thing
might have been a ploy to engage in
bacchanalias right under the church's nose.
Galatina has a fountain from which the victims of
tarantism drank: the water was believed to have curative powers. The fountain was presumably given to the town as a gesture of gratitude for their hospitality by St. Peter, who happened to pass through. The fountain functioned until 1970s, but then was closed due to the
unhygienic conditions: the victims were supposed to throw up after drinking the water -- back into the fountain...
In
Galatina, 59 young
Americans jumped on a 90-year-old man in his little front yard: he spoke Griko. He was supposed to
possess special wisdom because he stayed in the same place all his life (he worked as a mechanic, said he still tries to work). Our English teacher later wrote a cheesy song about the man:
...
Ninety years have I lived in this same house,
Her stones brought from our grandfathers' fields,
Keep the sun off our backs in the summer,
Chill our bones when the Mistral won't yield.
And there in the same bed I was born in
Lovers have moaned, their newborn have cried.
One sundown
soon I'll lie down there
And by morning's sun I will have died.
Refrain:Non
prendere le brutte strade,
Know that god lives in the back of
love's eye,
That your blood runs in the veins of your
children,
That uprooted the tree will soon die.
etc.
When we got back to
Viterbo, he translated it into Italian for his
presentazione orale and sang it in our Italian class -- pretty clever. I, like an idiot, talked about Caravaggio. (Actually it wasn't so bad. The Simon
Schama's BBC film about Caravaggio is quite interesting --
now also on youtube.)
In
Sternatia we visited an ancient underground
frantoio (olive oil press), converted into a little museum. There was a network of these where people worked and hid from
saracen invasions.
On March 1 we headed back up north, to
Alberobello. This is the town of
trulli, quaint houses with round roofs made of rocks, a UNESCO International Human Resource. The
tourist area of town looks like a fairy tale. It was pretty warm, by the way, but not summer. The town's name has to do with
albero belli, a "war" tree, not a beautiful tree. We saw a tiny
trulli museum (in a
trullo, of course). Some of the books on the gift stand dealt with fancy engineering theories on how the round roofs made of rocks stay up without any cement. The
history of Trulli is on the web.
In the morning we headed for a guided tour of
Bitonto, a small picturesque town, in a hunt for
il barocco leccese (that is,
baroque churches in the province of
Lecce). (We had had already seen fine samples earlier in
Lecce: the
cathedral, the
Santa Croce basilica). Here is the
Bitonto cathedral.
From
Bitonto, further up the east coast to
Trani. We made it to
Trani right in time to see its cathedral in the sunset. Its location seems unusual, right on the sea shore. Here is a rare surviving picture taken by M with her little camera:
The cathedral is built of local yellow stone. In the late 1800s it was scraped inside completely clean of all decorations, baroque and otherwise, presumably to restore its original condition. Indeed, nice, white, and clean. So much so, that some of the columns look all chewed up. Must be good for organ concerts.
Next day, a guided tour of
Castel del Monte, a huge octagonal puzzle (
see picture) that Frederick II ordered built from his precise drawings to baffle scholars and
amateurs for centuries. They are still looking for its purpose and golden ratios everywhere. Frederick never set a foot there. This is another
UNESCO World Heritage site.
Later a stop in Monte
Sant'Angelo. The main
attraction there is the Sanctuary built over a cave where archangel St. Michael has been appearing (no less than 4 times). This is the end of the popular pilgrimage from Mont Saint Michel in Brittany. Feels like we've completed one!
Our last stop was
Vieste, a small resort town on
Promontorio Del
Gargano. The weather didn't cooperate (rain, cold wind) but the kids had a good time on the beach in the rain...
We haven't been to Bari. My general impression of the countryside and small towns is that
Puglia is pretty poor and underdeveloped. It is a wannabe tourist destination and is quickly losing its
authenticity, while lacking really interesting sights as compared to other places in Italy.
