Palombaro Lungo Audio Guide

Palombaro Lungo: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Palombaro Lungo - Cisterna Ipogea

   Stand in Piazza Vittorio Veneto, the main square of Matera's historic center, and take a moment to notice the pavement under your feet. Beneath it lies the Palombaro Lungo, the largest underground water cistern in the city. Above you there are cafés, strollers and pigeons. Below, there is a vast chamber carved into the rock. This is the place where Matera's story of water becomes visible. The city grew up in a landscape where drinking water was never simply there for the taking, so its people learned to catch it, channel it and store it. The Palombaro Lungo is the grandest result of that effort, and it belongs to a wider network of cisterns that runs along the length of the Sassi, the old districts of the city. Over the next few minutes we will look at how this chamber came to be, how its walls were made to hold water, and how it was lost and then found again in modern times. Keep one image in mind: a hollow in the limestone rising roughly as high as a six-story building, hidden beneath a public square.

2. 02

   From Snow Houses to a Giant Cistern

   The Palombaro Lungo did not appear in one stroke. People in the Sassi area had always dug cisterns. As the population grew, from the sixteenth century onward, works multiplied to build up water reserves. The Palombaro Lungo was born from the linking of several caves that were already there. Some of them had served other purposes entirely, as snow storage rooms, wine cellars and tanneries. Imagine a tanner's workshop and a cellar knocked together into one great reservoir. The exact timeline is told in two ways. One account says the cistern was completed in 1882, to a design by an engineer named Rosi. Another says that in 1893, as demand for water increased, the original bell-shaped spring well dug into the rock was deepened and enlarged. In that telling, four caves and another cistern were annexed to it, under the supervision of an architect from Naples. Either way, the great cistern as you see it belongs to the late nineteenth century, built by the municipality to serve the growing district of the Piano, the upper part of town. The water came from rain and springs on the surrounding hills. Before it reached the cistern, it also fed the nearby Fontana Ferdinandea.

3. 03

   Rounded Walls and Ancient Plaster

   Here is the engineering trick that makes the whole place work. The cistern is cut into calcarenite, a porous stone that would drink water like a sponge. To stop that, the walls were lined with cocciopesto, a waterproof plaster. It is an ancient technique known to Mediterranean peoples for more than 2,000 years. At the Palombaro Lungo it was applied in a triple layer, made from sand, lime, clay and pozzolana. Look for the shapes too. The corners were deliberately rounded. Water presses hard against its container, and sharp angles could have cracked the plaster and ruined the waterproofing. The curves are therefore not decoration. They are structural common sense. The scale is impressive. The chamber is about 18 meters high and 50 meters wide, with a capacity of about 5 million liters of water. Inhabitants did not walk down with jugs. They lowered small buckets through two openings from outside. Even today water sometimes seeps in from a point on the bottom, and pumps periodically draw it off so that visitors can walk the raised walkways.

4. 04

   Lost, Abandoned and Found Again

   For decades the cistern was the lifeline of the Piano. That ended in the 1930s, when the Apulian Aqueduct brought water to the city. The Palombaro Lungo was then closed and abandoned, and its purpose faded from everyday life. It came back into view in 1991. A group of scholars led by Enzo Viti, a technical draftsman and expert in underground Matera, explored it while it still held a considerable amount of water. Viti crossed the cistern aboard a small inflatable boat. The rediscovery came only a couple of years before the Sassi of Matera were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list in 1993. That international attention highlighted a heritage that lay not only in rock-cut houses but also under streets and squares. Today you can still find a small trace of the old routine. In a dry area that was once submerged, nicknamed the little beach, some of the buckets that were lowered and lost can still be seen. Everyday objects, left behind by people who drew their water here.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   The Palombaro Lungo is open to visitors. You buy a ticket at the ticket office, which is located in the underground spaces of Piazza Vittorio Veneto. No booking is needed, and you can pay by cash or card. Opening days and hours change with the season, so check the official schedule before you plan your visit. Once you are down there, let your senses do the work. Notice how cool and shaded the air feels, how the walls curve, and how the plaster lining has held the stone together for generations. Then, when you climb back into the sunlight, look at the square again. Where do you think the water once entered? How many other voids might lie beneath the Sassi's streets? This cistern is only one chapter of Matera's underground story, so let your curiosity lead you through the rest of the old city.