Basilicata: “Italy’s Best-Kept Secret” (Part One)

Basilicata, also known by its ancient name Lucania, is a region of southern Italy, bordering on Campania to the west, Apulia (Puglia) to the north and east, and Calabria to the south. The region can be thought of as the “instep” of boot-shaped Italy, with Calabria functioning as the “toe” and Apulia as the “heel”. It’s divided into two provinces: Potenza and Matera. In a press trip sponsored by the New York Office of ENIT (The Italian National Tourist Board) and the APT (Regional Tourist Board) of Basilicata from December 12-16, I together with four other American journalists and five Canadians visited both provinces.
With no international airport and few fast trains Basilicata is hard to reach so is one of Italy’s least visited regions. In fact, in the almost 50 years I’ve lived in Italy, this was only my third visit. The best way to arrive is by plane to Bari and then by train or by a rented car to Matera or by plane to Naples and then by train or by rented car to Potenza. Nonetheless, Basilicata is an emerging tourist destination, thanks in particular to the small city (c. 60,000 inhabitants) of Matera, whose magical historical neighborhood I Sassi, divided by the hilltop, known as Civita, into two districts, Sasso Caveoso and Sasso Barisano, became a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1993, and in 2017 was designated European Capital of Culture 2019 together with Plovdiv in Bulgaria. Last year The New York Times ranked Basilicata no. 3 in its list of “52 Places to Go in 2018”, defining it, “Italy’s best-kept secret.”

Arriving in Bari, after an hour-and-a-half drive, our first two-day stop was Matera known for its late medieval (500-1000 AD) chiese rupestri (rock churches) and for its cave homes known today as “I Sassi” or (“Rocks”), which originated in a prehistoric troglodyte settlement. In fact, it’s believed that Matera is one of the earliest “towns” in all of Italy. (Outside Italy the only other cities as old are Jericho in the Palestinian Territories and Aleppo in Syria.) There is evidence that people lived continuously in Matera’s “Sassi” as early as 7000 B.C. and until the 1950s. In 1945, after the publication of Carlo Levi’s book Cristo si è fermato ad Eboli (Christ Stopped in Eboli) in which the author denounced the frightful living conditions in the Sassi, Matera became known as “la vergogna d’Italia” or “Italy’s disgrace” for lack of public assistance. Thus the post-World-War-II government, headed by Alcide De Gasperi, and other well-meaning northern Italian politicians like Communist Palmiro Togliati and industrialists like Adriano Olivetti quickly intervened. They forced the dirt-poor, illiterate, often sick with malaria, Sassi-dwellers to abandon their homes, where they’d always lived in the same room with all their domestic animals. They were moved 15 kilometers away to a brand-new settlement called “La Martella” with brand-new comfortable homes, but without the necessary facilities for farming. Thus the project was a failure and caused mass immigration to northern Italy and Northern Europe.

To learn more about the inhuman life of hardship in the “Sassi” your first stop, like mine, should be at Casa Noha, located in Matera’s highest point on Recinto Cavone in a 16th-century palazzo not far the 13th-century Romanesque cathedral. Administered by FAI (Fondo Ambiente Italiano), the Italian equivalent of Britain’s National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, Casa Noha is open from 9 AM to 7 PM from April to October with shorter winter hours, entrance fee 7 euros. There you can watch a 25-mintue video in English, “I Sassi invisibili: viaggio straordinario nella storia di Matera”, which explains the city’s history from its origins to today. From there you should visit a reconstruction of one of the Sassi’s typical homes: Storica Casa Grotta, Piazza S. Pietro Caveoso, Vicinato di Vico Solitario. It’s open everyday non-stop from 9:30 AM until sundown, entrance fee 3 euros. Another important sight is the hands-on Museo Laboratorio della Civiltà Contadina, Via San Giovanni Vecchio 60, open everyday from 9 AM-1 PM and from 4-7 PM, entrance 2 euro. It was founded 21 years ago by poet/anthropologist Donato Cascione, who over the years has collected some 10,000 objects to illustrate local agricultural life.

 

Your walk in the “Sassi”, nicknamed “Bethlehem 2”, is a stroll in a living crèche. It’s like a Biblical time machine. My only comparable experience was a walk in the Kasbah of Fez in Morocco. So it’s no wonder that it’s a favorite location of film directors for shooting their historical or Biblical movies: Pier Paolo Pasolini’s The Gospel of St. Matthew (1964), Mel Gibson’s The Passion of Christ (2004), Timur Bekmambetov’s Ben-Hur (2016), and Patty Jenkins’s Wonder Woman (2017), to just a few.
Five weeks after my visit, on January 19th Matera officially became the European Capital of Culture for 2019. (Its program is so vast and so varied, it’s best to check out and book the events of interest to you on the website www.matera-basilicata2019/it and then en). Another first for Matera is a full-year exhibition of some 200 works by Salvador Dalì. Several of is sculptures, an elephant with spindly legs, a lady with outstretched arms standing on a piano, his ubiquitous melted clock, to name a few, are on display outside in Sassi’s main piazzas. Still another first for Matera this year was the star awarded by Michelin for the first time to a restaurant in this city: “Vitantonio Lombardo”, named after its chef/proprietor and opened only last June. Here follows my interview:

VITANTONIO LOMBARDO: THE FIRST MICHLIN-STARRED CHEF IN MATERA

Our tastes in food are closely connected to our childhood; what are your first memories of food?
Even now, every time I enter my mother’s house and smell her pasta sauce cooking on the stove, I go crazy.

How did you come to love cooking?
Eating!

Are there any other professional chefs in your family?
Everyone has at least one chef in the family. In my case, it’s my mother.

A brief summary of your career?
Like many of us who have chosen this line of work, I began by going to hotel school, then apprenticeships. I remember my first day in the kitchen; I asked if there were extra chores in the kitchen I could do and they put me washing pots. From there, lots of restaurants, to finish at the courts of “the great masters” like Succi Silver, Paolo Teverini, Fabio Barbagliani, Gianfranco Vissani, and Davide Scabin. Then the travels abroad (France, Spain, and the USA) to meet other great chefs. To grow one has to “escape” and during this period I “escaped” several times to have a wider range of points of view.

On your website it’s written that your mentors were Paolo Teverin, Gianfranco Vissani, and Fabio Barbagiani. What did you learn from each of them?
From Succi Silver I learned respect for ingredients; from Gianfranco Vissani awareness of what my surroundings offered; from Fabio Barbagliani cooking techniques; from Davide Scabin creativity.

What did you learn from “Frank” Rizzuti, the first Michelin-starred chef in Basilicata for his restaurant in Potenza, who died shortly after receiving his star?
What I learned from my friend “Frank” was more personal. It’s universal, pertinent to everybody: That everyday of your life until your very last, you should never stop believing in your dreams because the realization that you have achieved them will repay you and those who believed in you for your efforts forever. Yes, forever!!!!!

What are the essential qualities of a top chef?
My motto is valid for anything and anybody: “Heart, Head, Guts.”

You have tattooed this motto followed by two dates on your arm. Are those the dates you received your Michelin stars?
Yes.

What was the name of your first Michelin-starred restaurant? and How was it different from “Vitantonio Lombardo”?
“Locanda Severino” pertains to another time in my life. It was a correct choice to wait until now to open my own namesake “Vitantonio Lombardo Ristorante”: my world, my cuisine…no ifs and buts!

What do you like best about your work?
The constant changes, which depend on the seasons, the products, people, and situations. The constant challenge, which inspires me to improve constantly.

The least?
The little time I have with my family.

In a nutshell how would you define your cuisine?
Mine or in other words Vitantonio Lombardo’s.

What are your signature dish and other specialties?
I don’t want to have a signature dish or other specialties. That would mean giving less importance to my other dishes. We strive for the best possible in every dish we prepare; then obviously our guests can prefer one to the others.

Other chefs you admire?
There are many many chefs I admire. Among the many I’ll certainly never forget my meal at Pierre Gagnaire’s, a myth! In the United States I could say that I have great admiration for Grant Achatz’s talent. Another unforgettable experience for me took place at Eataly in New York, where I cooked together with Scabin, Bottura and Cracco. The only problem I have with the United States is the distance it is from here.

Up to now you’ve told me about Vitantonio Lombardo the chef; I’d like to know more about Vitantonio Lombardo himself. For example, can you explain your unusual first name? Or perhaps it’s not in Puglia and Basilicata?
We southern Italians are very attached to our traditions and my first name is nothing more than a combination of my grandfathers’ first names. They’re combined so as not to play favorites, show a preference.

What are your favorite foods?
Pasta with tomato sauce.

A dish you dislike?
Blood sausage…unfortunately because it’s a local specialty.

Your favorite wine?
Bubbles.

Chefs are well-known for having collections of motorcycles, fast cars, or fancy watches; what about you?
I have few passions. To tell you the truth, I love cookbooks, but that seems so obvious. Therefore, the one of my collections that I care the most about is the DVD series “Holly and Benji”.

If they hadn’t become chefs, Heinz Beck would have chosen to be a painter, Gualtiero Marchesi a pianist, what about you?
When I was younger, I played the accordion and I started a group. Who knows, maybe I would have continued to play the accordion.

Do you have a pipe dream?
To be awarded a second Michelin star and become one of The 50 Best Restaurants…If I need to have a pipedream, let’s aspire for the best possible, dream of the top.

Although without Michelin stars I can recommend two simpler eateries which offer excellent local cuisine: Osteria Pico, via dei Fiorentini 42, in the Sassi for their pasta with pistachio pesto, strozzapreti with local crushed peppers, and wild boar stew and L’Arturo at Piazza del Sedile 15 not far from the Cathedral or from Casa Noha for their vegetable soups and pasta dishes. Both are family-run and moderately priced. Instead if it’s artisanal gelato you want, head straight for “Vizi degli Angeli” (“The Bad Habits of Angels”) for its imaginative flavors: milk with lavender, pistachio and dark chocolate, pineapple with ginger, and peach with red wine, its popsicles: fig, and spritz with peanuts, and its watermelon granite.

We stayed at the newly-opened luxurious Aquatio Cave Luxury Hotel and Spa in the Sasso Caveoso. Everything was blinding white–the walls, floors, the minimalist furniture, towels, bedcovers, you name it. The bathroom mirrors in every one of the 35 rooms and suites were engraved with the saying “Look me forever”, an expensive slip to correct even if its intentions were imaginative. Our food at dinner was good, but disappointingly did not include any local specialties, although many were listed on the menu. On the “bright side”, the breakfast spread was generous and delicious; the spa was cozy and well equipped; and the young staff gracious and willing.
Two colleagues arrived in Basilicata a few days before the group and stayed one night in the 3-star homey, no glitz, unpretentious Locanda San Martino with 41 rooms, in the Sasso Barisano and used by the ancient Romans as Baths, now the spa. Its owner Antonio Panetta, the native-son husband of Texan anthropologist Dorothy Zinn who teaches in Bolzano some 600 miles north of Matera, is opening a 2nd hotel nearby this year. In 1999 Daniele Kihlgren, the third child of a broken but millionaire northern Italian family with Swedish blood whose fortune was made in concrete production, took a solo expedition in the Abruzzi aboard his BMW motorcycle. Soon afterwards he bought the almost uninhabited Borgo di San Stefano di Sessanio in the Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park near l’Aquila to save the village from extinction by creating an albergo diffuso or “dispersed hotel”. Kihlgren is on a mission to save Italy’s southern Italian medieval ghost towns with authentic restorations. In 2010 he opened his second “dispersed” hotel, Sextantio Le Grotte della Civita within 18 former cave homes now candle-lit rooms in the oldest part of the Sassi, the Civita, facing the Murgia park and its rock-hewn churches.

When friends in Rome heard that I would love to return to Matera, they recommended La Casa di Lucio Hotel Relais and Sant’Angelo Luxury Resort, both restored cave homes in the Sasso Caveoso.
Most hotels in the Sassi do not have parking facilities, so, when you book, find out what hopefully nearby garage they use.
Aside from the Sassi, the Cathedral, Casa Noha, Matera and environs offers many other sights of cultural interest:
Rupestrian churches date back mostly to the Middle Ages when Benedictine and Byzantine monks became to settle in the caves of Matera’s Gravina or canyon. In the city the Rupestrian churches are San Pietro Barisano with its seven altars, frescoes, and a crypt with an ossuary; Santa Lucia alle Malve containing important frescoes including the one of the “Madonna del Latte” or Galattrofousa”; Santa Maria de Idris and St. John’s crypt and the Convicinio of St. Anthony. A few kilometers from town is the Crypt of the Original Sin (8th-9th century), considered by scholars to be the Sistine Chapel of rupestrian wall painting. The crypt is also called the “Cave of the Hundred Saints”.

The Palombaro Lungo is a largest (c. 59 yards deep and c. 165 wide) man-made cistern in the world. The website www.10thingstodoandsee.com/matera tells us it was “built in 1846, thanks to Bishop Di Macco, as a water reserve for the inhabitants of the Sasso Cervoso…The tank can contain about 5,000 cubic meters of water and was part of an ingenious water collection system made up of a complex network of channels…It was abandoned in 1920 and only rediscovered in 1991. You can admire one of the tanks dug into the biggest rock in the world…” An admirable work of hydraulic engineering! The 25-minute tours in English are at 10:30 AM and 12:30, 3:30, and 5:30 PM. Wear comfortable walking shoes for the iron-scaffolding stairs.
The art museums: The Museum of Contemporary Sculpture, located in the 17th-century Palazzo Pomarici and affectionately known as MUSMA, is internationally recognized for its unique cave exhibition spaces. Inaugurated on October 14, 2006, it’s the most important museum entirely dedicated to sculpture in Italy. Its artifacts displayed in chronological order trace the history of sculpture, Italian and international, from the late 1800s to the present. The collections of Pre-historic and ancient Greek pottery at the National Archeology Museum “Domenico Ridola” are impressive as are the paintings by Carlo Levi at the Basilicata’s National Museum of Medieval and Modern Art in the Palazzo Lanfranchi. His largest painting, “Lucania ’61”, celebrates the 100th anniversary of Italian Unification. Be sure to see the three photographs of Matera taken in the early 1950s by Henri Cartier Bresson.

 

A special time to visit Matera is during the weekends of the Christmas season when the Sassi really turn into a “Presepe Vivente” or “Living Crèche”. Another is the last week in June for celebrations culminating on July 2 for the Festa della Bruna, the feast-day of Matera’s patron saint with its grand all-day religious procession, which ends with the crowd destroying the Madonna’s elaborately decorated papier-maché and wood chariot, inevitably made every year, and a magnificent fireworks display. The first festa was celebrated in 1389 so this year’s is counted as the 630th time, even if there were no celebrations during the Second World War.