The Two Faces of Matera: Diachronic Narratives of Changing Perspectives on Heritage

In the early 1950s, the Italian city of Matera gains international prominence with the label of “national shame” attributed to the case of the Sassi, inhabited caves excavated in the local ravine. In a decade, it was transformed into the manifesto of Post-World War II development, in relation to the research and building programs of the National Institute of Urban Planning and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, promoting new neighborhoods as a modern alternative to relocate Sassi’s residents assuring better living conditions. The inclusion of the Sassi in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1993, and the process and events related to the European Capital of Culture 2019, have formalized the long-standing recognition of the Sassi as a heritage site and shows the complexity of the relationship between cultural events and heritage. On the other hand, the post-war neighborhoods disappeared from the public and disciplinary narrative, while facing the typical problems of half-a-century-old modern building stock and soliciting a disciplinary reflection in the frame of the twentieth-century heritage. The paper traces the genesis of the urban tensions opposing different and shifting understanding of the very concept of heritage, architectural value, and planning discipline.