Cattedrale di Matera

Matera's cathedral crowns the Civita, the rock spur that divides the two Sassi. Finished in 1270 and dedicated to Maria Santissima della Bruna and Sant'Eustachio, it layers austere Apulian Romanesque with later Baroque reworking.

Why it matters

UNESCO's listing of the Sassi describes Matera's oldest nucleus as the Civita, and records plainly that a Romanesque cathedral was built there, between the two Sassi, in the thirteenth century. That position gives the church its hold on the city: every street of the Sassi eventually tilts up towards it, and its mass reads from both ravine sides. It is the cathedral of the Archdiocese of Matera-Irsina, and the seat of Marian devotion that earned Matera the old name Civitas Mariae.

What to notice

Start at the door that leads to the bell tower. A Latin epigraph set there by the builders records that the dwelling of admirable aspect was completed in 1270, and it remains the fixed point of the building's chronology. The original fabric is Romanesque-Pugliese, and against it you can read the later campaigns: the clerestory's paired windows were reduced to single lights, a wooden counter-ceiling was fitted beneath the vaults, and in 1717 the Neapolitan Michele Santullo executed the stucco work that dresses the interior. Inside, look for the medieval fresco of the Madonna della Bruna: its painter takes his conventional name, the Maestro della Bruna, from this very image, the same hand identified on the Madonna del Latte in the rock church of Santa Lucia alle Malve.

Context and history

The cathedral served a diocese whose roots reach back long before 1270, and its dedication carries that history: originally tied to Santa Maria of Matera, it became the church of Santa Maria della Bruna, protectress of the city, and later added Sant'Eustachio as co-title, giving the official dedication still used today. The building was never frozen in the thirteenth century. Substantial changes came in the sixteenth century, and then in the early eighteenth, after the visit of Cardinal Vincenzo Maria Orsini, the Benedictine archbishop of Benevento who became Pope Benedict XIII in 1724. Under Archbishop Antonio Maria Brancaccio the interior was reshaped along the lines visible now: the window alterations, the counter-ceiling, the wall treatments and the Santullo stuccoes. What survives is a dialogue between the severe Romanesque structure and its Baroque dressing.