Puglia: beyond the sea there’s more! Yes, because there is Puglia more hidden, secret and fascinating of the ravines that are the most beautiful routes in this land. And Gravina in Puglia is called one of the city symbol of the Murgia plateau, a landscape gaunt and drawn from the rocks and water which has its undeniable charm.
The first to “discover” Gravina in Puglia were strangers, people outside, and not the people of Puglia. Directors such as Francesco Rosi here in 1967 set his “Once Upon a Time …” with Sophia Loren and Omar Sharif and in 1981 “Three Brothers.” Carlo Di Palma in 1975 brought here Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale for “Here begins the adventure,” while more recently in the town were shot “Bread and Freedom” with Pierfrancesco Savino (2008), “Guess who my daughter’s wedding” with Lino Banfi (2009), “Apartment in Athens” with Laura Morante (2010), until the last shot last year and directed by Marco Tullio Giordana “If you tell me”. And even when we of Città Meridiane were there in the streets of Gravina turned a crew for the filming of a documentary film about autism made by journalist Gianluca Nicoletti and his son Tommy.
But only a few years ago Gravina has become the destination of tours that lead to the discovery of its beauties. Because Gravina is beautiful, very beautiful. But not a blatant beauty, but hidden in the folds of a dress that nature and man have the custom designed over time.
We explored it in two opposite and complementary ways: in its bowels, penetrating in cave-houses, places of worship carved into the rock, warehouses and deep underground cisterns to collect water. And from the top of the bell tower of its cathedral, which offers a magnificent view of the city that embraces the horizon until the Botromagno hills and the spectacular bridge over the ravine, the final stretch of the aqueduct wanted by the Orsini. The city is deeply imbued from the impression of this important family of which it was continuously fiefdom from 1380 until 1816. Many are the monuments related to their name: the bridge-viaduct to the Church of Santa Maria del Suffragio or Purgatory funerary chapel of the family and the monumental Fountain at Palazzo Orsini to the wonderful little church of Santa Sofia, which houses the remains of Angela Castriota Scanderbeg Duchess in a tomb of rare beauty. Today, unfortunately, the church is not open because restoration but we have memory in a previous visit to the city where we had the honor of being accompanied by Prof. Pacella, one of the greatest scholars of the history of Gravina.
And one can not but emphasize that here in 1649 was born Pietro Francesco Orsini, who was elevated to the papacy under the name of Benedict XIII: an imposing statue of him is located in Cathedral Square, in front of the Basilica. Dedicated to Santa Maria Assunta , the Cathedral Basilica was built by the Normans in the late eleventh century and then rebuilt and enlarged at the end of ‘ 400. Inside it is presented divided into three arches supported by columns with capitals all different, but what is most striking are the altars made of polychrome marble in the early ‘ 700. Noteworthy also the baptismal font where also the future Pope was baptized and the immense organ with 2,135 pipes well.
Leaving the big church you can not help but look out over the ravine and the Rione Piaggio that together with that of Fondovito dates back to the Dark Ages and is one of the oldest of the current city. Instead, the first settlement is concentrated in the archaeological area “Padre Eterno”, which takes its name from the cave church, winds along the western ridge of the ravine, and preserves testimonies from the seventh to the fourth century BC.
Take a tour of the rock churches and hundreds of caves that pierce the walls of the ravine making its look like a huge Swiss cheese, it takes you back in time. In this world made of emptiness and steep rock the people of the Middle Ages took refuge fleeing from the barbarian invasions first anh then from Saracens raids. In natural caves, already inhabited in the Neolithic period, he continued to dig the stone changing and adapting it to their own uses and the building of real cities “reversed”. The rock dwellings protected by cliffs and ravines are no different from those found in Cappadocia, Turkey. With crushers, barns, mills, canals, stairways and ladders that demonstrate the presence of large communities. Everything was excavated in the rock: the beds, the closets, the basins, the watersheds for the collection of rainwater, the altars. A magnificent example of a place of worship carved into the stone is the rock church of San Michele delle Grotte, carved from a single huge boulder and surrounded by a series of small caves. The vault, made of a single stone, is supported by 14 pillars natural quadrangular, which divide the church into five aisles. Entering on the left, it is located the altar dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel with statue carved in stone of Gargano.
Along with the rock churches of Rione Piaggio and those at the foot of the Botromagno hill, among whichstands out the Madonna della Stella so called from a tradition according to which a fresco of Madonna with child would be found with a star on his forehead, it is a heritage immense that unlike the nearby Matera does not enjoy the protection of UNESCO. But, says Marcello Benevento, the Gravina Consortium coordinator in Murgia and IAT Gravina, who accompanied us on a visit, just recently it signed an agreement between the two cities with a memorandum of understanding between the Ministry of Culture, the City of Matera, the City of Gravina in Puglia, the Alta Murgia National Park and the historic-natural Archaeological Park of the rock Churches of Matera which provides a collaboration by the extent of the site of the Unesco World Heritage “I Sassi and the Park of the rock Churches of Matera”, inscribed on the list since 1993, to Gravina in Puglia. This subscription is targeted insertion of Gravina in the list of UNESCO World Heritage Site and the creation of a tourist route leading to the enhancement of the two cities, similar to regional characteristics and different for the cultural peculiarities that make them unique.
