Matera was emptied by a law of 1952

Law 619¹ of May 17, 1952 ordered the clearing of the Sassi districts of Matera and paid for the move, and 41 years later the same districts were inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Law 619 of May 17, 1952

Law 619¹ of May 17, 1952 is titled Risanamento dei rioni dei Sassi nell'abitato del comune di Matera, and it imposed the clearing of every area declared uninhabitable.

It is worth being precise about the verb. The state did not encourage people to leave, it declared their homes unfit and set the terms on which they had to go. Article 7 governs the declaration of uninhabitability and the deadlines for leaving, fixed by the mayor.

Article 14 handled the other side: the inhabitants could buy their new dwellings on 35-year instalments.

700 million to clear, 4,500 million to build elsewhere

The law put 700¹ million lire behind expropriations and public works for 1951 to 1955, and 4,500¹ million lire behind public housing for 1951 to 1957.

Set those 2 lines side by side and the policy reads itself. More than 6 times as much money was committed to constructing somewhere else as to touching the Sassi. The plan was not to repair the cave districts, it was to replace them.

The new neighborhoods built with that second figure stand on the plateau above the ravine. Almost no visitor sees them, and they are the physical half of the same law.

The emptying took decades, and the return took longer

The Sassi were progressively emptied over the years following 1952, and only began to be reinhabited from the 1980s.

That is three decades of a district inside a provincial capital standing largely empty. Whatever you read about continuity in Matera has to accommodate a generation-long gap in the middle of the twentieth century.

It also explains what you are walking into now. The cave hotels, restaurants and houses are conversions carried out after the return, not dwellings handed down without interruption.

1993: the same place, on the World Heritage list

The Sassi and the park of the rock churches of Matera were inscribed in 1993 under cultural criteria iii, iv and v, reference 670², with a core zone of 1,016² hectares and a buffer zone of 4,365² hectares.

41 years separate the law that declared the place unfit to live in from the decision that declared it of outstanding universal value. Both judgements were made by institutions, about the same stone, and neither was wrong on its own terms.

A note on sourcing: the UNESCO site page returns an error to automated requests, so the areas and criteria here come from the UNESCO office of the Italian culture ministry.

2019: European Capital of Culture

Matera was designated European Capital of Culture for 2019 at the end of 2014, the first city of the Italian south to hold the title, with dedicated funding allocated by subsequent state measures.

The exact date of the designation in October 2014 and the detail of the jury vote circulate in the press without an official source behind them, so they are not printed here.

The arc is the story: unfit for habitation in 1952, World Heritage in 1993, European Capital of Culture in 2019. Three official verdicts on the same rock in 67 years.

The number that is not in the law

1 figure is repeated in almost everything written about Matera and does not appear in law 619¹: the roughly 17,000¹ people said to have been moved, two thirds of the city.

It is not recorded as fact on this site. The legal text was read in full, though on a private legal publisher rather than on Normattiva, and it contains the mechanism, the deadlines and the 2 funding lines, not a headcount.

For what the Sassi are now, see Matera, and for how you get there, see the only capital without a railway.

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