I’m standing inside a cave where the walls hold black and white photographs of the family who once lived here. In one, the children are lined up in front of a large bed; in another, there’s a donkey in the kitchen. Furniture and domestic props laid carefully around me recreate the home as it once looked, complete with plastic animals to represent how families lived side by side with their livestock.
This is Casa Grotta Narrante, a cavernous house-museum in Matera that remembers a time when mortality rates were high and fires frequently tore through town. It evokes life as it probably felt back in 1950, when the now-popular destination was dubbed “the shame of Italy” by a visiting politician.
