Among masserie, jazzi and steppe-like pastures, a week on foot to uncover the agricultural and pastoral face of the Murgia.
At the Scalera masseria, between Santeramo in Colle and Altamura, you only need to set down your rucksack and a board of cheeses and a glass of wine will appear. And it really is a good idea to stop, if only to exchange a few words with Mariantonietta Scalera – a shepherdess by vocation – and her family, who tend that stony land with quiet determination. Then a glance at the goats in the pen, a stroke for the dogs and cats, and off you go again.
It is a gesture that repeats itself at the many possible stops along the masserie, over seven days along the Via Peuceta of the Cammino Materano, the route that crosses the ancient territory of Peucezia, named after the people who settled in the Terra di Bari in pre-Roman times. From the wheat fields and vast olive groves of the coastal plain, the path rises gently to the pseudo-steppes of the plateau, and on to the gravine – the karst gorges where Gravina in Puglia and Matera stand.
The first stages cross the Terra di Bari over almost entirely flat ground. From Bari to Bitetto the route leaves the sea behind at Bari Vecchia, in the shadow of the basilica of San Nicola. The path winds past the fortified hamlet of Balsignano, a testament to tenth-century Byzantine Puglia, and the Romanesque cathedral of San Michele Arcangelo at Bitetto. Towards Cassano delle Murge and Santeramo in Colle the landscape turns rural: masserie, trulli, olive groves and the Bosco di Mesola, where in May the wind ripples through fields of barley mixed with sulla, a legume with deep red flowers.
Beyond Santeramo the dry-stone walls thin out, the almond groves disappear, and the path enters the stony grasslands and karst hollows – the lame – of the Alta Murgia. It is a landscape shaped by the agro-pastoral economy that developed in the sixteenth century with the Regia Dogana della Mena delle Pecore, which governed the network of droveroads and the transhumance. And it is here that the Scalera masseria offers its welcoming pause, before the arrival in Altamura, a city draped across a low hill and instantly recognisable by the cathedral commissioned by Frederick II.
Not far from the centre, in the cave of Lamalunga, the fossilised skeleton of the Altamura Man was discovered in 1993 – an individual belonging to the species Homo neanderthalensis who lived approximately 150,000 years ago. For those who linger in Altamura, the museum at Palazzo Baldassarre tells the story of this extraordinary find, while the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Altamura displays, alongside exceptional Peucetian ceramics, a faithful reconstruction of the physical appearance of "Ciccillo" – the affectionate name the people of Altamura give their precious palaeontological specimen, discovered as it was on the feast day of Saint Francis.
The landscape changes with every season, open and scattered with isolated masserie and jazzi – the traditional dry-stone sheepfolds. In spring the green of the wheat fields blazes with poppies, wild tulips, gladioli and spontaneous orchids, some of them rare: the Murge are among the richest areas in Italy for this botanical family. In the sky the lesser kestrel wheels overhead, returning at summer dusk to roost in the historic town centres where it nests. In autumn it is cyclamen, colchicum and the yellow autumn daffodil (Sternbergia lutea) that colour the rocky ground.
In the arid grasslands grows the lino delle fate (Stipa austroitalica), a grass endemic to the Murge with silvery flower heads that move in the wind like waves. Alongside it grow the ferula, with its enormous yellow inflorescences – whose sturdy stems shepherds once used for walking sticks and stools – and asphodels, which colonise abandoned pastures, forming meadows of white-pink spikes. In the vegetable garden of a farmer met along the road, you might stumble upon the lampascione (Leopoldia comosa), a small wild onion with a bittersweet flavour, widely cultivated and highly prized in Puglia and Basilicata.
In Altamura it is inevitable to lose yourself in the medieval labyrinth of the historic centre, peering into the claustri – the enclosed courtyards crowded with potted plants, coloured festoon lights and laundry on the line, where entire family clans once lived – before finding your bearings again as you emerge along Corso Federico II, where the whole city gathers for the evening passeggiata.
From Altamura to Gravina in Puglia the path follows the ancient droveroads, among them, in all likelihood, certain stretches of the Via Appia, leading to a city perched on the edge of a gorge, with its Norman cathedral of 1095 suspended over the precipice. Beneath the houses of the historic centre stretches the underground Gravina, a labyrinth of cellars and cisterns hewn by pickaxe from the calcarenite. On the steep walls of the ravine, the openings of numerous rock-hewn churches peer out, also carved from the living rock. The route continues with a vertiginous crossing of the eighteenth-century bridge-aqueduct that spans the gorge.
The final two stages, somewhat more demanding in terms of elevation gain and distance, mark the border between Puglia and Basilicata. The route crosses the Bosco della Difesa Grande, one of the most extensive woodland complexes in the region, before reaching the Benedictine sanctuary of Santa Maria di Picciano, formerly held by the Templars and the Knights of Jerusalem. From here begins the final descent towards Matera: the arrival, along the ravine, is deeply moving, as the cave city reveals itself step by step – from the Sasso Caveoso, to the noble palazzi of the Civita, to the cathedral and the Sasso Barisano.
Altamura is worth visiting for its DOP durum wheat bread, baked in a wood-fired oven and best sampled fresh out of the oven — though it keeps beautifully for up to a week — and is the key ingredient in cialledda, a cold soup made with tomatoes, cucumbers and onions. The masserie along the route offer fresh cheeses such as provole and mozzarella nodini, but the territory's signature product remains the pallone di Gravina: a stretched-curd cheese with a distinctive spherical shape, a Slow Food Presidium since 2012.
A speciality of Basilicata, though found everywhere along the way, peperoni cruschi (sun-dried and fried red peppers) are a crunchy, non-spicy snack, or a vibrant splash of colour and flavour scattered over a classic plate of orecchiette. To accompany the dishes, verdeca — a wine made from the white-berry grape variety of the same name, cultivated for centuries in the Gravina area — is the local choice. In Bari, before setting off, it is well worth lingering among the market stalls of Bari Vecchia, where orecchiette are hand-rolled right before your eyes, and sampling the city's street food, from fried panzerotto to focaccia barese.
The via Peuceta is designed for a broad audience, including those tackling a multi-day walk for the first time. Summer is inadvisable, owing to the heat and the scarcity of shelters along certain stages — all the more so this year, when heatwaves have hit Europe hard; the ideal season runs from autumn through to late spring. The train remains the best and most ecological option: Bari is served by both Frecciarossa high-speed services and overnight Intercity trains from the main cities in the north. Matera is connected to Bari by the Ferrovie Appulo Lucane, which also stop at Altamura and Gravina in Puglia. Bitetto can be reached by train on the FS Bari–Taranto line. All intermediate towns are served by Cotrap buses.
Accommodation along the route is managed by Cammino Materano Ets, which coordinates a network of hostels, bed & breakfasts, and religious and private hospitality through a code of practice that commits affiliated establishments to keeping prices reasonable and to contributing to the maintenance of the route. Hospitality along the way is entrusted to a group of passionate volunteers, always on hand to solve problems and assist walkers, and who contribute enormously to the human quality of the journey. Those who prefer to walk without a backpack can make use of the luggage transfer service available along the entire route. GPX tracks for the route can be downloaded from SlowMap (a single track covering the whole Cammino), as well as from the official Cammino Materano website, where information on accommodation and trip planning is also available.
