Il paesaggio delle cave barocche di Matera tra usi e trasformazioni

The historical, landscape and natural anthropization context of the seventeenth century quarries of Matera is composed by the course of the Gravina stream and the passage of the Via Appia. It defines a repertoire of continuous uses between the quarrying activity, the devotional and settlement use in the continuous morphogenesis of a territorial system that conforms through its progressive subtraction, in both ways: in the lowering of the ground level for the extraction of building materials and in the rock excavations for the creation of habitable rooms. This process of continuous evolution and transformation was interrupted with the abandonment of the quarries in the first half of the twentieth century, leaving clear traces of the stratifications of use. The aim of this contribution is to frame the theme of the transformations of the territory by deepening the peculiar hybrid construction system: realised both by addition and subtraction that represents the morphology of the architecture and the residual landscape of the site. This construction system seems to be peculiar even compared to the specific building of the traditional “Sassi”of the Matera City. In fact, the area of the rocky altar of “Sant’Antuono delli Appisi” presents some rock architectural episodes created by excavation in their basement portion and yet covered by masonry vaults extradosed from the upper ground level. Here it is possible to read the diachronic reading of their transformations of use over time. The plot is to describe the constructive tradition of the area of the seventeenth century quarries in its landscape context which globally presents a territory of continuous transition between two main entrance routes to Matera: the route of the ancient Via dei Cavamonti (corresponding to a branch of the Appia roman way) and the road at the bottom of the valley which followed the course of the Gravina stream. The territorial landscape context, due to its productive vocation (quarry) and “city gate” is characterized by a series of votive rock chapels which, remaining preserved from the mining activity, define their positions and orientations, effectively modifying the territorial structure.