- Sep 20, 2017
- 11,228
- 20,858
- 28,180
Stage 5: Ceglie Messapica – Matera
The shortest road stage in the first two weeks is a hilly one on familiar terrain, combining the 2013 and 2020 finales. Both of those stages ended up in reduced bunch sprints, but this one is a bit harder…Map and profile
Start
The race quite literally heads backwards overnight, as Ceglie Messapica is the approximate midpoint of the preceding stage. Its name refers to the Messapians, the inhabitants of large parts of Salento from at least the 9th century BC onwards. This speaks to the age of the town, and indeed Ceglie was probably founded in the 7th century BC. The Messapians remained independent until the Roman conquest I discussed in my analysis of the previous stage, thanks in no small part to a large battle in Ceglie in 473 BC. Fighting against encroachment by nearby Taranto, which was at its peak the single most powerful Greek colony, they – together with the two other main Apulian tribes – inflicted such a crushing defeat that Herodotus describes it as the greatest slaughter of Greeks he is aware of. However, Ceglie itself would not make it to the Roman age unscathed, being conquered by Taranto about half a century prior to their arrival. The town had been one of the main Messapian centres and probably peaked as high as 40000 inhabitants, but most of them moved away after its fall and Ceglie would never scale those heights again. After centuries of dwindling into near oblivion, it redeveloped after the Normans built a castle here in the 11th century. Originally this was merely a watchtower, but it greatly expanded into a seat of lesser nobility that dominated the townscape especially after the 34-metre main tower was constructed in the 15th century. Ceglie Messapica has been fairly stable in that regional status ever since.
This will be the first time the Giro starts or finishes here, however it has plenty of cycling affinity: the Coppa Messapica has been held almost uninterruptedly since 1952 and is a fixture of the Italian domestic calendar. The roll of honour contains quite a few familiar names – Maximiliano Richeze, Mauro Finetto, Giovanni Lonardi and Matteo Moschetti among others – but the biggest name by far to have won here came in a one-off women’s version, in the form of the inaugural Giro Donne winner Maria Canins.
(picture by Decrescenzo2003 at Italian Wikipedia)
Route
We are back in the Murgia, and thus the first part of the stage is through rolling terrain. The range ends fairly abruptly on the southern side, giving way to a fast but untechnical descent into Massafra. Rather bizarrely, the intermediate sprint comes before the end of this descent, and even though the road does flatten out for a bit here it still feels needlessly sketchy. Shortly after, the Gulf of Taranto comes into view, and the route heads west and then south down the coastal highway and into Basilicata. The only deviation from this highway is to take in the second intermediate sprint in Marina di Ginosa, the final town before the regional border.
Once in Basilicata, the riders first pass the ruins of the great Ancient Greek colony of Metapontum and are then quickly diverted away from the coast. The rest of the stage is then spent travelling north through much trickier terrain. The climbing starts with a 1.6k at 6.2% climb into the hilltop town Bernalda, which is the location of the bonification sprint. Twenty kilometres further down the road, it’s time for the sole KOM of the day, Montescaglioso. At 2.6k and 9.1%, it’s strange that this is only a cat. 4, but then again that was also the case in 2013.
From its summit, the presumably-reduced peloton has 28 kilometres left to cover. However, Matera itself is much closer, and after a quick descent and an equally-short rolling section the riders take on the climb into the town centre. There should be some time to squeeze in pretty pictures here, because the gradients are low enough to prevent much from happening here.
Finish
In 2013, the route from the top of this climb to the finish was fairly direct, but here we have a short loop left to do. As such, the riders descend away from the town and onto the highway, where, at 8 kilometres from the line, they join the 2020 finale. The highway trends uphill until 4.2 kilometres to go, then right after the highest point it’s onto the highway exit and down a brief false flat descent. This section ends with a roundabout at 2.75k to go, where a right-hand turn takes us onto one last hill, the Via San Vito (750 metres at 6.3%). Another false flat descent leads into a tight left-hander at 1250 metres from the line, and two ninety-degree turns later the riders find themselves on the grippy 350-metre final straight (averaging about 4%).
Now, I know I’ve been going on about how old towns are for most of this analysis so far, but Matera takes the cake, as it has been continuously inhabited for possibly 10000 years. In spite of this, it never amounted to much in antiquity, only really starting to develop after the Lombard conquest of the 7th century. This is also where the origins of the Sassi, the cave dwellings for which Matera is famous, as we know them today are formed, as they were settled by monks in this era. The next few centuries would prove to be tumultuous: Matera fell to the short-lived Arab Emirate of Bari in 840, then was burned in 867 as the Franks conquered it, before the resurgent Byzantines recaptured the area (having already held it upon Justinian’s conquest of Italy) around 890. Both the Lombards and the Arabs attempted to retake the city in the next century, but it would be the Normans who claimed it next in 1043. This would mark the beginning of more stable times for Matera and while its relatively secluded location prevented it from becoming truly powerful, it very much prospered, as evidenced by the surviving medieval, renaissance and baroque architecture both above and below ground. Having historically been tied to Apulia, it was transferred to the inland Basilicata in 1663 and served as its capital until Napoleonic times.
It was also around this time that the city’s wealthier inhabitants abandoned the Sassi, and in combination with increasing demographic pressure conditions became truly squalid. By 1950, about half of the city’s then-30000 strong population was living in the old cave dwellings, with entire families living together with their livestock in single rooms in the absence of basic sanitation. Geographically more Apulian or not, Matera had very much become emblematic of the severely underdeveloped and impoverished Basilicata described in Christ stopped at Eboli – so emblematic, in fact, that the national government got involved and decided to – forcibly – relocate the inhabitants of the Sassi to newly constructed neighbourhoods. The Sassi then lay decaying for multiple decades, until preservation, restauration and also redevelopment for the sake of tourism took root from the 1980s onwards. This process was accelerated by the achievement of UNESCO World Heritage status in 1993. With this increasing dependence on tourism, it should come as no surprise that five of its seven previous Giro appearances have come since 1998, for the last time in 2020 (the aforementioned finish and the start the next day).
(picture by Superchilum at Wikimedia Commons)
What to expect?
Démare’s win on the same finish in 2020 will give a lot of sprinters hope, but realistically that stage was already at the less selective end of expectations and didn’t feature a climb the size of Montescaglioso in the finale. A more heavily reduced sprint is perhaps the likeliest option, but a strong finisseur could take advantage of that final hill and the technical nature of the final kilometres.
Facebook
Twitter
Instagram