Italy

It’s not that we are missing the sun-soaked beaches or the fabulous seafood of southern Italy, nor are we trying to escape the tide of tourists flooding the centre of Rome. But we took the very first road out of the city, the Appian Way, and headed back south towards Puglia…

These are the actual cobblestones that were laid in 312 BC (that’s a mind-blowing two-thousand-three-hundred years ago). These cobbles were originally cemented together and the surface was apparently perfectly smooth – but they have had a bit of wear since then. Even Julius Caesar and his army of thousands marched into battle down this road. And they all had to squeeze through this gate in the city wall that marks the start of the Way…

This is the Porto San Sebastiano, (San Sebastian’s Gateway), which leads us to our first stop on the Appian Way – the Catacombs of San Sebastian. This is San Sebastian…

It’s not actually his body, but we couldn’t take pictures of the bodies in the catacombs because there are none. Catacombs are subterranean cemeteries carved deep into the rocks surrounding Rome when it was illegal to bury bodies within the city itself. There are more than 40 catacombs with hundreds of miles of narrow underground passages each lined with rock shelves on which the bodies were placed. The Catacombs of San Sebastian has 17 kilometres of tunnels that held about 70 thousand bodies. But where are the bones? All stolen in the middle ages apparently, when every Roman Catholic church in the world wanted the relicts of a saint. And without DNA... who knew!
One skeleton that wasn’t stolen was that of Cecillia Metella, the 1st century BC daughter of Rome’s richest man. Her son made sure she was safe by building her this massive mausoleum by the side of the Appian Way…

The Appian Way goes all the way south to Brindisi and we had already been there, so we turned around and headed back into Rome and then went east to Tivoli to visit Hadrian’s Villa. This is Hadrian’s Wall…

It’s the same Hadrian, but not the same wall that marks the northern end of the Roman Empire in England. This is just part of the enormous garden wall that surrounded Hadrian’s swimming pool at his sprawling estate in the foothills of today’s Tivoli…
Thousands of servants, slaves and dignitaries lived here in the first centuries AD but, just as in Rome, most of the grand buildings were repurposed from older ones. These ‘piles of old bricks’ are more than two thousand years old…

The Romans loved baths. Emperor Hadrian had his own private baths, and three toilets, on this island…

Others had to make do with public baths in this massive building…

The luckiest got to swim here in the pool of the nymphs…

The sprawling estate of Hadrian’s Villa is a day’s trip in itself – especially as it can take several hours by metro and bus to get there. However, we enjoyed our short holiday in Rome and are now spending the night in Athens, Greece.
Where to next…Umm. Let’s see..

Rome wasn’t originally on our itinerary, but when the Egyptians simply refused to tell us when, or even if, their new museum would open in Cairo, we changed plans and headed to Rome. However, the afternoon train from Bari gave us a chance for a final look at the picturesque harbour of Trani…

The octopus fishermen were bringing their catch ashore in Santo Spirito, so we had fresh octopus pizza pouches while watching the azure sea and sky meld perfectly together in the bay…

Four hours later the tranquility of the olive groves and beaches of Puglia was shattered by the utter chaos of Rome. It may be Halloween, which often means chilly winds and cold showers, but the sun was shining in Rome and the world was visiting. This is the view of the fountain at the foot of the Spanish Steps…

We have done the whole Rome thing several times – the Vatican, The Colosseum, The Pantheon etc. – so we thought we would focus on smaller sights like the fountains. But at our next stop, the Trevi Fountain, we found an almost identical scene of disappointment that we had witnessed on our 2015 visit. The fountain was drained for cleaning and there was no point throwing in coins…

However, in 2015, we had been lucky to witness the moment of re-opening after a major facelift and then we got to throw our coins. And it obviously worked! Here we are back in Rome. But there are so many fountains in Rome that we soon gave up and spent our time marvelling at all the magnificent ancient buildings...

This is Constantine’s Arch, that was originally Hadrian’s Arch but was repurposed. And this is the Theatre of Marcellus that may look like the Colosseum…

The theatre could hold 20,000 people and was built in the 1st century BC but was simply used as the foundation for some apartments in the Middle Ages after its marble cladding had been removed to grace newer buildings. But so much of Rome has been repurposed many times. Beneath almost every building are the remains of earlier constructions. Most of ancient Rome (circa 700 BC) disappeared under the magnificent structures of the Roman Empire two thousand years ago. Here, at the main trading centre, ancient Rome, empirical Rome and medieval Rome can be seen piled on top of each other…

Ancient Rome is everywhere here, and two-thousand-year-old bits of carved stone lie about like discards in a mason’s yard…

And then there are the statues…

Hadrian, Trajan, and Caesar are all here, together with the most famous Romans of all: twins Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome, being suckled by the she-wolf. (it’s a long story) …

Despite the crowds we are really enjoying the backside of Rome. It is eternally fascinating, although we are beginning to wonder if the garbage strikes that hit Naples last year have spread here.

Having discovered relatively few signs of the Roman Empire here in southern Italy we are now heading north to Rome, the Eternal City, and we start here in Mesagne, the southernmost point of the Appian Way that was begun in Rome in 312BC and took nearly 400 years to complete...

However, our days in the sunny south have been filled with such wonder and delight that we must pause for a final look before we move on. Firstly – the olives. We must have seen a million olive trees, and when the small black fruits are perfectly ripe they are oozing with delicious oil. The ancient trulli scattered in the olive groves are a reminder of less affluent times and the small towns and villages are filled with quaint streets never intended for cars...

For security, few cities were built in the valleys, so enticing flights of steps lead us up and down a hundred times a day…

Thankfully, we have good knees which we also needed for the larger cities. They were hectic with tourists but we long ago perfected avoidance techniques that allow us to appear alone. Early starts and late finishes always give us an edge and whenever we see a tour group advancing by the front door – we dive out the back…

Deciding which pictures are most illustrative of our experience is always a challenge. Focusing on the big picture means leaving many smaller images on the cutting room floor. For example: intricate stone carvings grace the façades and doorways of many buildings…

Triumphal arches, monuments and statues abound, (although we rarely have time to discover their purpose). And then there are the cats…

Was this one hoping to turn a scene into an artwork?
We could have a thousand pictures of cats and, while they ae clearly strays, we see people everywhere feeding and caring for them.
Despite the aggressive driving and the way that every Italian discussion appears to be a screaming match, we have been warmly welcomed. In the cathedral of St. Euphemia in Irsina we were invited to watch an art restorer working on a priceless five hundred year old statue of the saint…

Travelling solo gives us the flexibility to stop and stare; to take the roads less travelled; and to say “We would be honoured” when kind strangers like Beth invite us into their home…

Beth and her husband are Americans who have perfected the art of remote working. They live part of the year in a beautiful apartment built into the medieval castle walls of Irsina overlooking Italy’s breadbasket – the vast valleys where the durum wheat is grown for the iconic pastas and pizzas And this is a real Neapolitan pizza…

Now we have caught up, it’s time to take the Red Arrow bullet train to Rome. We hope you can join us there in a day or so.

As we sit on our balcony for breakfast and look down on Matera and the Gravina Gorge we are looking over a site that is one of the oldest continuously occupied settlements in Europe. From the river at the foot of the gorge it’s easy to see why people would have thought this a safe place to live twelve thousand years ago…

In 1947, Italian doctor, author, artist and anti-fascist politician, Carlo Levi, painted a verbal image of the horrors of Matera in his book, “Christ stopped at Eboli.” These are his edited words translated: “I came to a street of old houses running along a precipice. Matera was in that ravine, but I could see nothing because the ravine plunged downward almost vertically…

"I began to descend a mule track that passed over the roofs of houses – if that is what they should be called. But the houses are just the façades of caves, piled one on top of another so that one man’s ceiling is another’s floor"…

“The caves have no opening except the doorway and some are entered by ladders from above. Inside are miserable furnishings with dogs, sheep, goats and pigs lying on the floors. Each family has just one cave and they sleep altogether with the animals. In the heat, with clouds of dust and flies, children sprang out everywhere, many completely naked. I saw children with eyes half-closed; eyelids red and swollen. They had trachoma. I met children with faces wrinkled like old people and bones showing from hunger; their hair crawling with fleas; their bellies swollen and faces yellow with malaria… “

The “house fronts” stretch 8 or 10 deep up the near vertical face of the ravine and only when you climb the many steep steps do you appreciate how precarious and dismal life here was in the dark damp caves until the 1950s. Even the churches were carved deeply into the rocks with only the bell tower being built of stone outside the cave...

But Matera wasn't always Levi’s vision of Dante’s Inferno. It had been a wealthy baroque city of great palaces and fine churches in the 16th and 17th centuries. This is the church of the Purgatorio...

Medieval Matera’s greatest asset was its vast underground public cisterns which made living here both possible and pleasant in the hot dry summers. This is the 16th century Palombaro Lungo which held 5 million litres of potable spring water…

During Matera’s heyday, the ravine’s caves were used for storage and animals. Most people lived in grand houses on the surrounding hilltops. However, the city soon became overcrowded and after Giuseppe Bonaparte, (Napoleon’s brother), moved the regional capital from Matera in 1806 the economy collapsed, forcing the impoverished peasants to live alongside their animals in the caves. Some men laboured on farms miles away for subsistence wages and might walk hours each day but, thanks to Carlo Levi's book, Matera was deemed “a national shame” and by 1956 the government gave the peasants new homes near the farms. Some people stayed and this is an actual cave bedroom that was vacated in 1960…

Now, as we watch the warm city lights from our balcony we reflect on the four fascinating days we have stayed here...

We realize that, within our lifetime, this was one of the most hellish places on earth where newborns had little chance of surviving childhood and life expectancy was less than fifty.
When we planned a four day visit to Matera we thought that may have been too long - but now we know different. This is a truly fascinating city and, while we hope that its recent stardom in the opening sequence of the latest Bond movie doesn't swamp it with too many tourists, we believe that the unfortunate souls who suffered here deserve everyone's recognition.

Like a single opening symphonic strain, a secret tunnel leads us from our room to a balcony where, in the warmth of the rising sun, the sandstone buildings of Matera rise in a crescendo that bursts into an exuberant overture that almost overwhelms our senses…

And then we take our seats for a performance on one of the most perfect stages in the world – the Sassi of Matera in Basilicata…

As the overture continues, we are led down lengthy arpeggios of ancient stone steps into the heart of the piece…

Here a small mountain rises like a soloist and weaves an intricate melody filled with cave churches that have echoes of chants from 13th century monks…

And then the music takes us lower – much lower – to a dark, dank place deep inside the silent stone world of the caves where we hear only the mournful music of the souls who lived and died here…

And then we rise again into the light and the stone arpeggios take us higher and higher…

There are brief pauses for stone grace notes carved into the piece hundreds of years ago...

Until, with a flourish, we burst into the grand finale, where the 11th century cathedral is accompanied by a carillon of bells and a solo soprano…

Just as we think we have hit the high notes, we enter the cathedral to see the altar rising above us and a heavenly choir singing…

As the final strains of the symphony fade into the setting sun the lights go up and we realize that we have witnessed one of the world’s finest performances. And we will get to enjoy the magic again tomorrow.
However, while this stone symphony is full of light and life today, it has very dark undertones. When Matera was first on the world’s stage in the 1950s it was not a symphony bright with enchanted melody. It was in every sense a danse macabre – a Dante’s inferno carved in stone – where 30,000 impoverished peasants lived a dismal life underground. The music of the sassi, the cave dwellings beneath the city, was filled with the cries of the sick and hungry accompanied by the snorting of the farm animals that lived beside them in the most squalid conditions imaginable. Next time on Blissful Adventures we will reveal more wonders of Matera and how it has been resurrected into one of the most fascinating cities in the world.