The construction of ma.s.serie all over Apulia from the late Middle Ages onward reflected not just a need to protect peasants but the increasing importance of olive farming, each ma.s.seria being equipped with a press and countless oil jars. A feature of Apulian life since the Messapian period, olive trees had begun to be grown commercially during the early thirteenth century, at first by the monasteries. Then the feudal lords copied the monks, so that eventually every big estate had its ma.s.seria and olive groves.

Since wine was another staple of Apulian agriculture, there were vineyards as well as olive groves near every ma.s.seria, which always contained a wine-press. In some places the ma.s.serie stood among seemingly endless almond groves while those around Conversano, Monopoli and Putignano were encircled by no less beautiful cherry orchards. Cherries were preserved in grappa as early as the eighteenth century. With fewer olives and vines, ma.s.serie on the otherwise tree-less sheep runs of the Alta Murgia or the northern Tavoliere specialised in cheese and b.u.t.ter, employing professional dairy men to process the ewes' milk.

Charles Macfarlane, who came to Apulia in 1817 and knew it better than any other early traveller save Pacich.e.l.li, has an unusually helpful description. "The ma.s.serie in Apulia and the provinces of Bari, Otranto and Taranto, are all built on the same plan", he tells us: A square wall of enclosure, sufficiently high and solid, generally surrounds the dwelling-house, built against one side, and containing three or four large habitable rooms, and sometimes a small chapel. The vast stables, granaries, and out-houses, within the walls, form a right-angle with this dwelling-house, but without touching it. In the midst of the enclosure, at some distance from the surrounding walls, rises a round or square tower of two storeys, standing quite alone. The ascent to the upper storey is either by stone steps, inserted in the tower, or by a drawbridge, or by a ladder easily drawn up into the tower.

General Sir Richard Church was also in Apulia in 1817, hunting down brigands. He too describes a ma.s.seria, "a very good specimen of its cla.s.s", when prepared for a sudden attack by horse-men, the Ma.s.seria del Duca: Its thick walls dated from the middle ages, and were loopholed and protected by great solid gates and an avenue of trees, which was now effectually blocked up by carts with the wheels taken off, and logs and tree-trunks laid crosswise. At one corner of the enclosure rose a square tower, from the top of which you might overlook the great plain, dotted with white towns and villages, patched with brown leafless vineyards, green meads, silver-grey olive-orchards, and bounded by the shining sea.

The general recalled what he found here, "in a very large room, comfortably furnished after the manner of these Apulian ma.s.serie", obviously, the quarters of the ma.s.saro, the steward who ran the estate for its absentee landowner.' At this date, few proprietors ever dared to visit such a dangerous countryside, not even for the hunting.

Great chests, some for holding meal, some for holding clothes and linen, a heavy oaken table, some stools and benches, were on the floor; jars of olives, figs and raisins, stood upon a shelf against the smoke-dried wall; strings of onions, sausages, and dried fish dangled from the rafters. Cheeses were there too, and huge jars of olive-oil, and half-a-dozen demi-johns (great stone bottles), stoppered with oiled cotton, and containing the wine of the country, stood under the table.

Externally, the Ma.s.seria del Duca, at the foot of the little hills just south of Martina Franca, still looks much as it must have done in General Church's day, with caciocavallo cheeses hanging up under the eaves to mature, even if its outbuildings house battery hens and a very modern dairy.

Although deserted, the vast Ma.s.seria Jesce between Altamura and Laterza, in the Murgia Catena on the border with Basilicata, is a particularly impressive example, almost a castle. Built of tufa, on the ground floor there were stalls for oxen and horses, with store-rooms; on the floor above, more store-rooms and living accommodation; sheep-pens ran along the walls outside. Small look-out towers projected at roof level. The lower part dates from the sixteenth century, the upper from half-way through the seventeenth, added by the de Mari family, Princes of Gioia del Colle, who were lords of Altamura nearby. The de Mari also restored a medieval chapel underground, building a pa.s.sage down to it. Far inland and intended as a defence against brigands and starving peasants rather than North Africans, this gigantic ma.s.seria is an eloquent monument to the chronic insecurity and dangers of life in the remoter areas of the Apulian Murge.

Nearer the sea, further south, there was another scourge. "The Ma.s.serie, or farmhouses, in this part of Apulia are generally built on elevated ground, to avoid the malaria", wrote Janet Ross, after a visit to the ma.s.seria of Leucaspide between Ma.s.safra and Taranto. She continues: Round the large courtyard are high walls, and one side is occupied by a vaulted ox-shed, built of stone, with a manger running all round, divided off for each animal... At one end an archway leads into a vaulted room with stone benches all round, on which the shepherds sleep, and in the middle is a huge slab of stone on which olive branches smoulder, and where the ma.s.sara prepares the meals for the men.

She tells us too that "The hoeing, weeding corn, &c., is all done by gangs of women, who come from the nearest towns, chiefly from those on the Murgie hills, sometimes twenty miles off, and stay for six weeks or two months, sleeping all together in a big vaulted room on the ground floor."

Life at a ma.s.seria was very much that of a community: On Sundays and saints' days a priest with a small boy came together, on a donkey, from Ma.s.safra to say ma.s.s in the wee chapel near the threshing floor at Leucaspide... The fervour with which the labourers beat their b.r.e.a.s.t.s when they said "mea culpa", was most edifying, but must have been very painful. Vito Anton, the guard, always served ma.s.s with an immense pistol stuck into his belt behind, and was quite the most important person of the ceremony.

On rare occasions they celebrated, dancing a local dance, the Pizzica-Pizzica. Mrs. Ross describes the orchestra at a ma.s.seria party: a guitar, a fiddle and a guitar battente, which has only five thin wire strings, and is a wild, queer, inspiriting instrument which would "make a buffalo dance", as they say; a tambourine, and a cupa-cupa, a large earthenware tube, with a piece of sheepskin stretched tight over the top, and a stick forced through a hole in the centre. The player begins by spitting two or three times into his hand, and then moves the stick up and down as fast as he can; this makes an odd, droning sound, rather like a bag-pipe in the far distance.

The result reminded her of "Arab music".

Life was just the same at ma.s.serie on the Murge or the Tavoliere until almost the Second World War.

28.

The Via Appia

The Appian Way is less tiresome...

Horace, "A Journey from Rome to Brundisium"

THE VIA APPIA, most celebrated of the great Roman roads, was the main route between ancient Rome and Southern Italy. Begun by Appius Claudius Caecus in 312 BC, originally ending at Capua, it was extended through Benevento, Venosa, Taranto and Oria to Brindisi a length of 350 miles. A road for all weathers, it provided fast and easy transport to Rome, bringing more trade with the East and prosperity for the Apulians. Before Taranto the road went through some of Roman Apulia's most beautiful countryside, and even now you can imagine what it was like when Horace lived at Venosa and Cicero owned a villa there. With the decline of Taranto, however, and the creation of the Via Traiana linking the cities of the Adriatic coast, the Via Appia lost much of its importance. Eighteenth century travellers preferred the Via Traiana, anxious not to risk meeting brigands for longer than absolutely necessary.

A map of the borders of Apulia and Basilicata can be deceptive. A quick glance shows hilly, even mountainous country, but this is not what you experience. A gently rolling landscape is broken up by small hills, yet the ground rises so gradually and imperceptibly that until reaching Monte Vulture, which for miles can be seen towering above the plateau, you are not aware of being at any height. It is easy to understand why it held such attraction for Horace, the Normans and the Emperor Frederick II, who spent the last summer of his life at Melfi and Castel Lagopesole. Melfi and Venosa figure so prominently in the story of Hautevilles and Hohenstaufen that modern boundaries mean little spiritually, they are still part of Apulia.

Venosa was sacked by the Emir of Bari, rebuilt by the Frankish Emperor Louis II and won back for the Eastern Empire by Basil the Bulgar Slayer. Beneath its walls the Normans won their first crushing victory over the Byzantines. All that remains of the medieval city is the ancient abbey of La Trinita. Robert Guiscard, greatest of the pioneer Norman leaders, founded its church in 1065 on the site of several earlier churches, beneath which lay a temple of Hymen. His tomb disappeared long ago, his bones being thrown with those of his brothers William Bras-de-Fer, Humphrey and Drogo into a simple marble sarcophagus. Visiting Venosa in 1848, Edward Lear saw "a single column, around which, according to the local superst.i.tion, if you go hand in hand with any person, the two circ.u.mambulants are certain to remain friends for life."

After Lear's visit there was a terrible earthquake. Part of the hill north of the abbey fell into the valley below, revealing Jewish catacombs. There were Jews in Apulia from the fourth century until their final expulsion in the seventeenth, who followed the Palestinian practice of using grottoes as cemeteries. Those at Venosa were wealthy landowners and supplied several mayors. Frederick II saw that they were left in peace, but vicious persecution broke out when the Hohenstaufen were replaced by the Angevins. Lenormant found inscriptions in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, some in a strange b.a.s.t.a.r.dised Italian written in Hebrew characters.

Lear stayed with Don Nicola Rapolla in a large rambling mansion at the end of the square in which there is a statue of Horace. They dined with Don Nicola's brother, discussing Shakespeare, Milton and "quel autore adorabile, Valter Scott" (that adorable author, Walter Scott). Lear found everything delightful, food, wine ("superexcellent"), beds and furnishings which, with the cleanliness of the paved streets, came as a surprise in the depths of the South. One wonders what his hosts made of this very odd Englishman, with his simian features and green gla.s.ses. They probably sneered at his watercolours. But he had those letters of introduction that were all important in the old Regno.

In Lear's day the fifteenth century castle had not yet become the squalid rooming house seen by Norman Douglas. Built by Pirro del Balzo, Prince of Altamura, on top of the old Norman fortress, the walls of its dungeons were still covered with mournful inscriptions by prisoners.

Melfi's name is a.s.sociated with Frederick II's "Const.i.tutions" of 1231, the first written law in Western Europe since Roman times. In his own words, "we do not wish to make distinctions in our judgements but to be fair. Whether a plaintiff or a defendant is Frank, Roman or Lombard, we want him to have justice". Women could inherit property and widows were ent.i.tled to free legal advice. Rape, even of a prost.i.tute (so long as she had put up a good fight), was a capital offence. Pimps were sentenced to slavery.

During the sixteenth century Apulians preferred Spaniards to Frenchmen, and Melfi would never have fallen to Lautrec in 1530 had not a traitor opened its gates. Lautrec sacked the city, killing many of its citizens. The Spaniards swiftly retook it, slaughtering the French garrison. In the municipio courtyard there is a stone pillar with a ring, said to have been the Spanish 'gallows' presumably they used the garrotte.

Little remains of old Melfi, whose great castle over a precipice was considered "perfectly Poussinesque" by Edward Lear. "One of the towers of Roger de Hauteville still exists, but the great hall, where Normans and Popes held councils in bygone days, is now a theatre." Lear found Melfi attractive, with its clear streams and pretty valleys scattered with walnut trees, black goats cl.u.s.tering on the crags or lying outside the valley's many caves. There were innumerable sleepy convents and pretty wayside shrines. He may well have been the last Englishman to see Melfi like this. On 13 September, 1851, the Athenaeum Journal printed the following report: The morning of the 14th of August was very sultry, and a leaden atmosphere prevailed. It was remarked that an unusual silence appeared to extend over the animal world. The hum of insects ceased, the feathered tribes were mute, not a breath of wind moved the arid vegetation. At about half-past two o'clock the town of Melfi rocked for about sixty seconds, and nearly every building fell in.

The castle, especially the modern part where Lear had stayed, was badly damaged, convents and churches obliterated. The houses of the poor ceased to exist, the campanile collapsed, and a new inn with 62 customers and 25 horses inside became a heap of rubble. In all 840 people were killed. King Ferdinand came to direct the relief operations, spending a night of torrential rain in a hut. Next morning he toured the ruins, handing out money. He pardoned prisoners who had helped dig people out from under the rubble, and sacked the mayor for stealing most of the funds sent by charities.

The woods of Monte Vulture were the haunt of brigands until the late 1860s. An expensive safe conduct was essential for a traveller who wished to avoid being held to ransom; unless it was paid immediately, reminders in the form of an ear or a nose were sent to the victim's family. When the brigands were finally routed, their place in the woods was taken by wolves returning to their old home. They had always been a problem in these remote upland forests, Frederick II ordering poison to be laid for them around his hunting lodge of Lagopesole. Some of the woodland still remains, but the wolves have disappeared.

29.

Horace, the Apulian

I, born by sounding Aufidus...

Horace, "Odes"

ONE OF APULIA'S GLORIES is to have given birth to Quintus Horatius Flaccus. You have to know Latin fairly well to read Horace properly, which is a pity, since his poetry is so beautiful. He has been compared to Bach varying a theme or Chopin developing a cadence, and his verse has lasted down the centuries, its devoted admirers including the Emperor Augustus, Milton, King Louis XVIII and Rudyard Kipling. "No ancient writer has been at once so familiarly known and so generally appreciated", a Horatian addict wrote in the 1880s. "We seem to know his tastes and his habits, and almost to catch the tones of his conversation." Nowadays, most people read him in translation although almost impossible to translate yet he still casts a spell.

Horace was born on 8 December 65 BC, at Venosa, then a staging post of the Via Appia and the largest colonia (colony) of veteran soldiers in the Roman world, with a population of 20,000. Although he left for Rome when he was about twelve, and spent most of his life there or in the villa given to him by Maecenas, he never lost his love of the country around Venosa. The River Aufidus is mentioned in many of the "Satires" and the "Odes" as in the prophetic "Exegi monumentum": I have achieved a monument more lasting than bronze, and loftier than the pyramids of kings...

I shall be renewed and flourish in further praise, where churning Aufidus resounds, where Daunus poor in water governed his rustic people...

His father, a freed slave, had settled at Venosa, becoming a tax-collector and auctioneer. He prospered, buying a small farm, sending his son to Rome and to Athens for his education. In 42 AD Horace joined the Roman republican army at Athens and, despite his being an insignificant young man, small and plump with a paunch, Brutus gave him command of a legion; he fought at Philippi against Octavian and Mark Antony, throwing away his shield and fleeing during the subsequent rout. Pardoned and given a post in the treasury at Rome, his wonderful verses soon gained him patrons.

In 37 BC he travelled to Brindisi with Virgil and his patron Maecenas, who, as a friend and adviser of Octavian afterwards the Emperor Augustus was hoping to negotiate a reconciliation with Mark Antony. Horace immortalised the journey in the "Satires".

A staging post whose name he does not give, because the water he bought there was "the worst in the world", may have been Venosa where the road forked to join the future Via Traiana. At Canosa the bread was so vile that he thought the bakers must have mixed sand with the flour. No doubt he consoled himself with the excellent Canosan wine, afterwards much admired by Pliny the Elder. (Good even today, and getting better all the time.) Perhaps it was on this journey, too, that he heard of a miracle in a temple at Egnatia on the coast, when incense was said to have liquefied without being burned, a story that made him laugh.

Horace's lifelong affection for Apulia stemmed from his love of its countryside, not of its inns, which sound on a par with those experienced by later travellers. The landscape around Venosa has apparently changed comparatively little during the last two thou-sand years. There are fewer of the woods that the poet loved, but it is still agricultural, with little or no industry. The beautiful, extinct volcano of Monte Vulture now has a road up to the lake in its crater, yet even now Horace would feel at home here, perhaps more than anywhere else in Italy. This is rolling, upland country, very different from the Murge, with pretty valleys and small towns perched on crags. This was where he had spent his childhood: On pathless Vultur, beyond the threshold of my nurse Apulia, when I was exhausted with play and oppressed with sleep, legendary wood-doves once wove for me new fallen leaves, to be a marvel to all who lodge in lofty Acherontia's eyrie and Bantia's woodlands and the rich valley farms of Forentum.

Crauford Tait Ramage, one of the few travellers to visit Venosa during the last century, describes the area as thickly wooded in 1828: "you cannot stroll through such a country as this without feeling that its poets develop a rich and animated conception of the life of nature." The farms Horace knew had been given over to sheep from the Abruzzi and the hills of Basilicata, but today the farms have come back.

A famous link with Horace may lie a few miles to the east of Venosa, at Palazzo San Gervasio, possibly his "Fons Bandusiae" ("Spring of Bandusia"). Although most think that the spring is near the poet's villa at Tivoli, as late as the twelfth century the district round Palazzo San Gervasio was called Bandusino Fonte. Two fountains claim to be the spring, the Fontana del Fico and the Fontana Grande. Norman Douglas preferred one of the many springs on the northern edge of the hill on which the village stands, suspecting that the terrain had been altered by earthquakes. Certainly, it would be pleasant to think of the shade of Horace coming here every October, to sacrifice a kid in celebration of the Fontinalia at the "Bandusian spring more brilliant than gla.s.s, worthy of flowers and cla.s.sic wine."

For once, however, Norman Douglas sounds a note of caution. "But whether this at San Gervasio is the actual fountain hymned by Horace ah, that is quite another affair. Few poets have clung more tenaciously to the memories of their childhood than did he and Virgil... and yet, the whole scene may be a figment of his imagination... Here at San Gervasio I prefer to think only of the Roman singer, so sanely jovial, and of these waters as they flowed limpid and cool."

30.

Life at Altamura

Situated among gentle hills, surrounded by strong high walls...

G B Pacich.e.l.li, "Il Regno di Napoli in Prospettiva"

ALTAMURA IS ANOTHER CITY on the Appian Way, 1500 feet above sea level, among the hills of the Murge. Its name, derived from its "high walls", has taken on a new and unpleasing significance in recent times, because of the bleak grey apartment blocks that have arisen on the outskirts.

Called Sub Lupatia under the Romans, Altamura was destroyed by the Saracens and lay deserted for centuries before Frederick II re-founded it in 1230, specifying that its inhabitants must include Catholics, Greeks and Jews in equal numbers. The Greek rite survived at the church of San Nicola dei Greci until 1601 and a synagogue till the sixteenth century. He gave the city a castle, and also a cathedral that King Robert the Wise began to rebuild in 1316, placing his coat-of-arms over the main doorway; heavily restored in the 19th century, it lacks charm. The castle, a typical Hohenstaufen fortress, together with the high city walls, was demolished during the nineteenth century. It stood in what is now Piazza Metteoti.

In the 1360s one of the naughty Giovanna I's four husbands, the faithful Otto, Duke of Brunswick, was imprisoned at Altamura by the enemies who later murdered her. During the same century Giovanni Pipino, Count of Minervino and Lord of Altamura, was considered so intolerably overbearing that he suffered the ultimate indignity of being hanged from the city walls by his own va.s.sals.

In 1463 the fabulously rich Gianantonio del Balzo Orsini, having grown very old, was secretly done to death in the castle by royal command. Prince of Taranto and Altamura, most of Gianantonio's life had been spent in civil war and king-making.

In 1482 another over-mighty magnate, Pirro del Balzo, was created Grand Constable of the Regno and Prince of Altamura, only to perish miserably a few years after. During King Ferrante's gruesome reprisals for the 'Barons' Plot', del Balzo was strangled in a Neapolitan dungeon and his body thrown into the sea in a sack. The doomed Federigo of Aragon, last of his dynasty, was briefly Prince of Altamura before becoming King of Naples in 1496, but the French and Spaniards soon came and conquered his kingdom.

During the eighteenth century the city become very prosperous, with a population of 24,000. It established a short lived 'studio' or university and called itself the 'Athens of Apulia'. Unfortunately for the Altamuresi, its academics adopted the ideas of the French Revolution.

Early in 1799, the dons at the university rallied Altamura to the new Neapolitan Republic. However, Cardinal Fabrizio Ruffo landed in Calabria, raising a royalist army from his family's tenants. The Sanfedisti (Christian Army of the Holy Faith) included not just loyal gentry but a number of brigands who killed and plundered as they went. When they reached Altamura on 9 May, its citizens ran out of ammunition after only a day. They fled the same night, the men going first, followed by the women and children, to hide in the dank grottoes of the Murgia like their ancestors. Entering Altamura, the Sanfedisti found a vault full of dead royalists, some buried alive, and any citizens who had stayed were ma.s.sacred and the houses sacked. Men from Matera and Gioia del Colle joined in, bringing carts, while every sheep and cow, every horse, pig and chicken in the surrounding countryside was stolen, the Gioiesi alone making off with 3000 sheep. After a fortnight the Sanfedisti allowed the starving Altamuresi to creep back from the ravines into a city where their goods were still being sold in the market place. They had to ask permission to enter their own houses and 130 were arrested as known Jacobins. It took decades for Altamura to recover.

George Berkeley had commented on the openness of the country in the region between Altamura and Gravina, and on the vast flocks of sheep: not a tree in view; some corn, some scrub, much the greater part stony pasture; a small brook, no cattle or houses, except one or two cottages, occur in this simple s.p.a.ce; sheep fed here in winter, in the summer in the Abruzzo, gra.s.s here being dried up in the summer, and a fresh crop in September... those who own the sheep mentioned are men of the Abruzzo, many of them, very rich, and drive a great trade, sending their wool to Manfredonia, and so by sea to Venice; their cheese to Naples, and elsewhere up and down the kingdom; they nevertheless live meanly like other peasants, and many with bags of money shan't have a coat worth a groat.

But this sort of sheep ranching created a landscape like the Scottish Highlands after the clearances, driving many peasants to despair. Some joined the brigands, others forced their daughters into prost.i.tution in the towns. Sons with good voices were castrated and sold to choirs if discovered, their parents claimed that the boy had fallen asleep in the fields and a pig had bitten off his t.e.s.t.i.c.l.es. The Risorgimeno brought even more misery.

Just as on the Tavoliere, the sheep runs of the western Terra di Bari became latifondi. Shepherds and dairymen were thrown out of work and common land was ruthlessly enclosed. By the late 1860s, it was said at Altamura that there were only two sorts of people, carriage folk and the rest. An Altamuran bureaucrat reported how the ma.s.ses "openly display their hatred for landlords and officials". Their distrust of officialdom was justified, corruption being rampant and every charity maladministered. Former Borbone soldiers turned brigand, establishing hideouts in the region called the Graviscella, full of small ravines and caves, from where they emerged at night to find food and money at gun-point. More than a few landowners or priests sheltered them out of dislike for the new Northern regime and for its alien, arrogant Piedmontese troops and administrators.

Most Altamuresi, however, had no stomach for an outlaw's hunted life, accepting an equally lethal if less dramatic sub-existence in a labour gang. By 1901 eighty per cent were day labourers whose misery was aggravated by the uncertainty of being employed at all. In 1920, when drought made the ground too hard to dig, one in five went without employment, the lucky seldom working a three day week. There were government hand-outs of flour, but it was mouldy or adulterated; the officials at Altamura would only give women ration-tickets in exchange for s.e.xual favours. With such widespread resentment, the situation was explosive, kept in check solely by fear of a nearby Fascist cell at Minervino Murge.

When the Germans abandoned Bari in the autumn of 1943, they established a new headquarters base at Altamura. Up in the Murge, it was ideally placed for directing a stand against the Allies. However, Field Marshal Kesselring 'Smiling Albert' as his soldiers called him needed every man he could find, to try and beat back the Allied landing at Salerno, and simply did not have enough troops to hold Apulia. No doubt, his decision to withdraw was helped by the all pervading misery of life in the little city in those days.

Horace must have driven along the Via Appia through Altamura or, at any rate, Sub-Lupatia on his way to Taranto. Nearly two millenia after he had pa.s.sed by here so cheerfully, most of its inhabitants were worse off under King Victor Emmanuel III than their Roman ancestors had been under the Emperor Augustus.

Part VII.

The Cave Dwellers.

31.

The Cave Dwellers.

Remember, O Lord, those in the deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth...

"The Greek Liturgy"

ONE OF THE STRANGEST FEATURES of the old Apulian landscape was the cave-city, originally a hiding-place from Goths and Saracens, but lasting long after the danger had ceased. Whereas grotto-churches existed almost everywhere, Apulia's cave-cities were restricted to an area bounded by Grottaglie in the east, and by Gravina-in-Puglia and Taranto in the north and west. The majority were abandoned during the late Middle Ages, although Mrs Ross saw people living in grottoes at Ma.s.safra and Statte during the late nineteenth century, while the underground cities at Gravina-in-Puglia and Matera (the latter now in Basilicata) were inhabited until the 1950s. Matera is the best known, thanks to Carlo Levi's "Christ Stopped at Eboli".

The plateau of the Murge, especially at the edges, is divided by ravines (gravine), formed by long-vanished rivers slicing through the tufa. The Apulians either moved into caves already existing in a ravine, some of which had been occupied in prehistoric times, or carved out new ones, their animals living with them. From even a short distance away, in wooded country, many cave-cities were invisible, the caves frequently concealed by dense vegetation and their access ladders pulled up each night.

A cave-house was generally divided into a living room and a bedroom, the beds being skins on platforms cut in the rock. At one side there was a tiny kitchen, with a ring carved in the ceiling to hang a cooking pot and a hole to let out smoke. Cisterns were dug in the floor, with channels for collecting rain-water; others covered by wooden trapdoors contained corn or oil, and niches in the walls held provisions and household implements. Where an underground city survived into the sixteenth century, as at Gravina-in-Puglia or Matera, the caves were often disguised by a faade of dressed stone so that outside they looked like proper houses.

Grotto-churches are known technically as rupestrian churches, meaning hollowed into a bank from the Latin word for a cliff, rupis. These eerie places of worship resembled the better-known rock-chapels of Cappadocia, even if the terrain was totally different. Although sometimes no more than a chapel with an altar, frequently they were complete churches with pillars, aisles and apses. Occasionally, they were even full scale monasteries on several floors, possessing not only a chapel, but a dormitory, refectory and library. Their most attractive feature was the Byzantine frescoes that the monks painted on the plastered rock-face. Tragically neglected, these must rank among the most haunting and least appreciated art-treasures in Western Europe.

None of the travellers seem to have visited any of the smaller under-ground cities, such as Laterza and Ginosa. In both places the cave dwellings, including one or two churches containing faded remnants of frescoes, were abandoned long ago. The ravine at Laterza is very impressive, but the most interesting church here is not a grotto in its steep sides, but one dug out of the floor. Now the crypt of the Santuario della Mater Domini, this has some fine twelfth century frescoes, especially a beautiful Santa Ciriaca, who has the long, thin nose and enormous eyes of a true Byzantine saint. There is a fifteenth century marble fountain at the bottom of the ravine where, as in the cave-dwellers' time, flocks still drink in the evening and clothes are washed in water gushing from the mouths of grotesques.

Ginosa has little to offer sightseers, except on the night of Holy Sat.u.r.day when a Pa.s.sion play is staged in its ravine, a thoroughly effective revival that makes admirable use of microphones and modern lighting. Before it starts, city dignitaries and religious confraternities escort the cast of actors and children in a procession through the city and along the ravine, which is brightly lit by flares. The audience follows, trooping down the dark, twisting streets to a natural amphitheatre opposite the old cave settlement. They sit on the ground, hissing and booing when Judas betrays Christ, and cheering when he hangs himself from a wild fig-tree.

An ugly incident at Ginosa in 1908 reminds one that, even after the inhabitants had left their caves, they still lacked water. During one of the worse droughts in living memory, a large band of parched and starving children went to the church, shouting at the priest that he must pray for rain. Instead of praying, he threw two buckets of precious water over the children, two of whom were trampled to death in the ensuing panic. A thousand labourers returning from the fields rushed to the church to lynch the priest, who was saved by the carabinieri only just in time.

Inspired by Lenormant, who was the first to recognise the merit of Apulia's Byzantine frescoes, Charles Diehl visited Mottola. Perched on top of a hill, the little city has a splendid view of the plain beneath, of the sea, and of the mountains of Basilicata and Calabria. It has been inhabited since prehistoric times and in 274 BC King Pyrrhus of Epirus was routed by the Romans in a skirmish just below the city. Sacked by the Saracens in 846, it was re-fortified by the Byzantines, but those inhabitants who had not been slaughtered or dragged off into slavery preferred to live in the deep ravine that lies to the south, as did their descendants for several centuries.