Sextantio Matera: a widespread receptive project aiming to protect the identity of marginal places and to return them to residential use

In 2009, with “Le Grotte della Civita”, Sextantio recovered some rock caves preserving and protecting the “poor” identity heritage of Matera, of which the Sassi represents the prototypical example.

The choice was made to conserve the existing, by using, where stripped, salvaged architectural material. And trying to preserve all the possible built-up area with the signs of the multiple stratifications of their varied uses over time, bringing back original furniture too. It is an identity project already tested by our company in other places protected from their fate of marginality (Santo Stefano di Sessanio in Abruzzo region and Nkombo Island in Rwanda).

We opened the “Palazzo della Civita” on July 1st, 2023. The assimilable goal of the “Palace” and the “Caves” of the Civita (the oldest part of the Sassi district) is to try to prevent tourist re-destination from corrupting the historical integrity sedimented in millenary places like the caves of the Sassi of Matera. Here the cave dwellings are irreversibly losing their historical identity also due to the serialized diffusion of the tourist product. This second project in Matera is characterized by a Seventeenth-Century palace that merges in successive stratifications with the rock architecture. We have reduced from 12 to 5 the rooms intended for hospitality, and an excavation process is underway in which the rupestrian caves are intentionally left without a new destination.

It consists of a deconsecrated rupestrian church and of a huge cellar going into the belly of Matera. The caves excavated in the outer perimeter of the Palace, will house a workshop of local domestic crafts, and a contemporary art installation with soundscapes from the identity tradition of the Sassi.

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Sextantio Matera: a widespread receptive project aiming to protect the identity of marginal places and to return them to residential use

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Sextantio Matera: a widespread receptive project aiming to protect the identity of marginal places and to return them to residential use

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