Between the caves lie terraces, courtyards and small gardens – the open space of a city without streets. Think of the Sassi only as caves and you miss half of it.
The vicinato
In front of the entrances lie courtyards that belonged to several families together. These neighbourhood yards – vicinati – were the social unit of the district: here people washed, worked, talked and watched the children. In the middle lay the shared cistern and often a bread oven.
The courtyard did what a street does elsewhere. It was half private, half public – an in-between space for which modern town planning has almost no equivalent. Several such yards made up a rione.
Gardens in the rock
Soil was heaped on the terraces and planted. Figs, vines and vegetables grew where somebody lived underneath – the roof of one house was the garden of the next. Because water was scarce, the plants stood where the rain collected anyway.
This stacking is the real building principle of the Sassi: no separation of house, path and garden, but the same surface used several times over.
Why it matters
The resettlement of the 1950s tore exactly this structure apart. People were given flats with windows and running water, but no courtyards – and therefore no neighbourhood in the old sense. Many older resettled residents later described that as the real loss, rather than the move itself.
Where to see it
In many places in both districts, if you pay attention to the spaces between rather than the façades. Most clearly in the Sasso Caveoso, where less was built over. The Convicinio di Sant’Antonio follows the same idea – four churches around a shared courtyard.
Read on
- The cave dwellings of the Sassi – how the rooms were lived in
- The rioni of the Sassi – the neighbourhoods and their names
- The Sassi di Matera – the overview
