From outside the Sassi look like a single slope. Those who lived there saw it differently: the district was divided into rioni, small units with their own name, their own church and their own courtyard. Those boundaries appear on no map today – the names, however, have held on.
What a rione was
Not an administrative district but a neighbourhood. The smallest unit was the vicinato: a shared courtyard with several cave dwellings around it, a cistern and often a bread oven in the middle. There people washed, worked and kept an eye on the children. Several such courtyards made up a rione, usually named after its church.
This structure explains why the resettlement of the 1950s was a rupture for many and not simply an improvement: the new flats had windows, running water and electricity – but no courtyard. There is more on this on the page about the courtyards and rock gardens.
The names
The same handful of names keeps appearing on old plans and in the city’s stories:
- Casalnuovo – the southern spur of the Sasso Caveoso, where the buildings run out into the slope. The name simply means “new settlement” and refers to a late extension.
- Malve – the area around the convent church Santa Lucia alle Malve in the Caveoso.
- Pianelle – named after the flat rock steps the slope consists of here.
- San Biagio – in the Sasso Barisano, around the church of the same name.
- Castelvecchio – the upper edge towards the old fortification, laid out long before the Castello Tramontano.
Then there is the Civita, the rock spur between the two Sassi – the oldest core and the only one of these areas still perceived as a place in its own right.
Why the boundaries are blurred
The rioni grew over centuries; they were never planned. Their edges ran where a staircase ended or a rock blocked the way. After the clearance nothing of this was carried forward. Anyone looking for a map with clean lines will not find one – and should take the names for what they are: memories of an order that came out of living together and vanished with it.
Read on
- The Sassi di Matera – the overview of both districts
- The lanes of the Sassi – how you move through them today
- The cave dwellings of the Sassi – how people lived in the rioni
