Materan contradictions: architecture, preservation and politics

Shaped by encrusted layers of development spanning millennia, the southern Italian city of Matera is the ultimate palimpsest.

Known as the Sassi, the majority of the ancient city is composed of thousands of structures carved into a limestone cliff and clinging to its walls.

The resultant menagerie of forms possesses a surprising visual uniformity and an ineffable allure.

Conversely, in the 1950s Matera also served as a crucible for Italian postwar urban and architectural theory, witnessed by the Neorealist, modernist expansion of the city that developed in aversion to the Sassi.

In another about-face, the previously disparaged cave city has now been recast as a major tourist destination, UNESCO World Heritage Monument, and test subject for ideas and methods of preservation.