November 17, 2023
In Gravina
A day off the bike
I woke up to blue skies again - that’ll be nice for my planned day of exploring the area.
My B&B building is very quiet. I confirmed at breakfast that I’m the only one here. The breakfast offering was simple -just a cornetto still warm from the bakery, and coffee, which I swapped for hot water. I had to make two tiny cups of herbal tea because there are no larger vessels in the breakfast area. I supplemented the meager offerings with an apple that I bought yesterday. Then it was time to explore.
Gravina and a few other Puglia towns are known for their ravines and cave houses, so first some geology. Remember that I climbed up from the Adriatic yesterday? The limestone karst plateau I gained is known as the Murgia. It has soft and fractured rock with deep ravines running between and through towns. The rock contains natural caves and sinkholes, and is also soft enough to carve out by people who wanted a place to live, pray, or hide out. The rock is also easy to quarry for building materials, and saltpetre can be scraped off the walls for use in ammunition or to preserve meat.
I started my day with a 45 minute tour of the cave houses in Gravina. Who lived in caves? As a start, it was hermits, bad guys, ethnic minorities, and people prosecuted for their religious beliefs. But the caves I looked into also seemed to house regular poor folks who worked for the wealthier people who lived upstairs.
The tour was terrific - it was just me and the guide, Carmella. The cave houses here were lived in until after WW2 when it became a public shame for Italy and the government forced everyone out of the historic centre of Gravina and also out of the cave dwellings in nearby Matera, where I’m heading tomorrow. Now the historic area of town is pretty much all renovated and seems very nice, with lots of rental accommodation but more residents. My guide reported that there a few old ladies left who still don’t have running water because they choose not too.
There is an unrenovated cave house museum that goes many metres underground and has been decked out with historical artifacts. In the old days, families lived in the caves with their donkeys and chickens. They cooked indoors too. All the dwellings were interconnected. There are also tombs in the caves, because some of the ancients chose to live with their dead relatives. 😳 I’ll bet the whole place smelled something awful.
As we descended beyond the living area, we explored an ancient Christian chapel and then in the lowest level of the cave there was a pagan temple (guide’s words, not mine - I don’t know it’s age). Virgins who were about to be married crawled up to the temple from the river to pray for healthy children.
Later residents practiced winemaking in the caves, and converted the old chapel and pagan temple into wine cellars. The guide pointed out the area where a wine guardian would have been posted to keep an eye on who was coming and going from the cellar. They didn’t need a hidden cave church anymore because there was a giant church built abovegound.
The caves were also used by local communists during WW2 to hide from the fascists. My guide’s great-grandfather was one of the people who met in a cave, below the bakery where he worked.
Pretty much everyone who invaded these parts has resided here. The local dialect is reportedly Greek-influenced. Outside of the caves, we saw the Albanian area of the old town - they were orthodox Christians. We’re not that far from Albania, now that I think of it. Carmella also pointed out the very small Jewish quarter. She said the Inquisition here was pretty minor. There was even a pope born in Gravina. Benedict XIII lived until 1730. He mustn’t have made a great mark - he hasn’t been made a saint yet despite multiple investigations.
There is a ‘Roman Aqueduct Bridge’ here that isn’t actually Roman. It was built in the 17th century to replace a bridge that was destroyed by an earthquake. It looks Roman though with arches, hence the name. Carmella reported that earlier bridges were wooden because that made them easier to dismantle in the event of an invasion. The current bridge was featured in the most recent James Bond movie. Money from movie is being used to rehabilitate it.
I walked across the bridge and among the old caves and cliffs. It’s amazing that there are no barriers. I had to tread carefully, because it’s a long way down. Monks lived in the tiny church that was carved out of the rocks on the far side of the bridge. They grew medicinal plants and operated a pharmacy. They reused old columns as decoration - they’re still standing. Access is restricted to area of the the rock church and columns.
After exploring near the bridge, I wandered up a nice path to the top of a hill beyond town. There is Greek and Roman archaeological site called Botromagno that was excavated, in part, by scholars from the University of Alberta. I enjoyed the views, but not the strong winds that threatened to blow my phone out of my hands. i didn’t encounter many people on my walk, just one guy picking mushrooms, and a 40-something couple in their olive grove picking olives by hand and letting them fall into netting. I haven’t seen that before. It looked like slow work.
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My guide reported that in the olden days olive oil was too precious for poor people to cook with. They did use it for skin care. They used pork fat (lard) for cooking and also lighting. The poor received a small portion of olive oil daily as wages, but they’d collect it and resell it rather than consuming it themselves. I found an internet source that said cooking with lard was most common right to the post WW2 era.
Fun fact for the day - there are quite a few feral cats here. They are fed and are looked after as thanks for their work as mousers. Some are spayed to keep the population under control.
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5 months ago