I’ve been to Matera twice in the past 8 years. The first was a day trip. The second we stayed in a renovated stone walled(not caved) home owned by a woman raised there. Friends stayed in a sassi concession. We made the right call. Had a small shared courtyard in front with a wonderful slot view and close access to the cathedral piazza. The courtyard made it feel like a secluded hill town rather than a crowded museum.
I think about Matera a lot, for its lessons in vision, public investment, cultural recovery and tourism. Both for the miraculous recovery and the honest assessment of perhaps too much of a good thing. Everybody goes to the actual newish residential area for evening activities. The community would benefit by allowing a greater percentage of full time residents. The local Don seemed shocked when we asked if his actual church offered a Mass we could attend. Again, no babies in sight.
You touch on an important and largely hidden aspect of what is involved regarding restoring buildings in Italy . Now a complicated and expensive undertaking which also increasingly negatively affects all in the sector
The pattern holds in kitchens too, and Milan has a strict version of it. The michetta is hollow because in the humidity of the Po plain a compact crumb turned gummy overnight, so the bakers engineered a loaf with almost no crumb inside. It was designed not to last a day, and it is now sold as a symbol of the city, which is the trullo story with flour. The same goes for the LATTERIA signs still painted over doors in my neighbourhood. Until 1998 a shop licence in Italy was granted by merchandise category, so the sign was a legal declaration of what you were allowed to sell rather than decoration. When the law went the signs stayed, because taking them down cost more than leaving them, and people photograph them as charm. The food follows the same rule: cassoeula, busecca, nervetti, mondeghili are all built from the cuts nobody wanted. The one step I would push on is the last one. The constraint does not always dissolve. In a dining room it is still there every service, it has only stopped being visible to the person eating. Does that hold for the trabocchi that are restaurants now, where the machine has become the room?
I’ve been to Matera twice in the past 8 years. The first was a day trip. The second we stayed in a renovated stone walled(not caved) home owned by a woman raised there. Friends stayed in a sassi concession. We made the right call. Had a small shared courtyard in front with a wonderful slot view and close access to the cathedral piazza. The courtyard made it feel like a secluded hill town rather than a crowded museum.
I think about Matera a lot, for its lessons in vision, public investment, cultural recovery and tourism. Both for the miraculous recovery and the honest assessment of perhaps too much of a good thing. Everybody goes to the actual newish residential area for evening activities. The community would benefit by allowing a greater percentage of full time residents. The local Don seemed shocked when we asked if his actual church offered a Mass we could attend. Again, no babies in sight.
You touch on an important and largely hidden aspect of what is involved regarding restoring buildings in Italy . Now a complicated and expensive undertaking which also increasingly negatively affects all in the sector
The pattern holds in kitchens too, and Milan has a strict version of it. The michetta is hollow because in the humidity of the Po plain a compact crumb turned gummy overnight, so the bakers engineered a loaf with almost no crumb inside. It was designed not to last a day, and it is now sold as a symbol of the city, which is the trullo story with flour. The same goes for the LATTERIA signs still painted over doors in my neighbourhood. Until 1998 a shop licence in Italy was granted by merchandise category, so the sign was a legal declaration of what you were allowed to sell rather than decoration. When the law went the signs stayed, because taking them down cost more than leaving them, and people photograph them as charm. The food follows the same rule: cassoeula, busecca, nervetti, mondeghili are all built from the cuts nobody wanted. The one step I would push on is the last one. The constraint does not always dissolve. In a dining room it is still there every service, it has only stopped being visible to the person eating. Does that hold for the trabocchi that are restaurants now, where the machine has become the room?