Tipologia:
Site of interest
“I due pezzoni” were two simple blocks of stone placed on either side of a certain street which in the past would have been paved with river cobblestones. These stone blocks not only served as a warning that carriages were not to pass on the pedestrian side, but also they represented a type of symbolic “notary public” for Matera’s peasants. The blocks acted as the “witnesses” of sales and loan contracts which were sealed by a handshake in the presence of a man known as “guastatore di croce” (sapper) who acted as guarantor for the contracts.
There was a story of a man who one day had become tired of taking care of his elderly father and decided to hoist him up on his shoulders to take him to the poorhouse of the Convent of Sant’Agostino. When the man got to the two stone blocks he wanted to stop and have a rest, so father and son sat down, one opposite the other. His father looked worried and the man asked for an explanation and his father answered that when he was young he also got tired of taking care of his father and wanted to get rid of him in the same poorhouse for the elderly. The son, upset by his father’s answer, realising that life events repeat themselves in cycles, put his father back on his shoulders and took him back home. In remembrance of this true story, local sculptor Nicola Morelli created a statue of an elderly man sitting on a stone block.
Piazza Vittorio Veneto 75100 Matera
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